Title: Starts out well, then goes to hell
Review: It's difficult for me to say what I think of Gregory Maguire's "Wicked." On the one hand, the premise is truly interesting and Maguire writes well, with compelling characters and rich (if sometimes heavy-handed) symbolism. Unfortunately, although he ostensibly chose to set his tale within the land of Oz imagined by L. Frank Baum, Maguire soon jettisons this well-known world of childhood in favor of his own postmodern interpretation. The result is an Oz of relational angst, animal activism, political intrigue, alcohol abuse, murder and explicit sex, with more than a little autobiography mixed in for good measure. The result is a story that unspools like a broken film from a projector.This is the rarest of books: a story where the musical adaptation is far superior to the source material. Don't bother with the book if you can see the Broadway production instead.
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