Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

I enjoyed this book greatly. It does a wonderful job of telling a deep, personal, human story and the struggle life often involves. It touches on the nature of good and evil, political structures, family conflicts, and variety of other issues that regular people deal with everyday.

In addition, the story has great character development. Throughout the course of the characters lives, you learn so much about them as they grow and change. It is truly a deeply touching story - you really feel for the characters as they experience their trials and frustrations of their lives.

Though, I must say, this is not a book for children, unlike one might expect. Indeed, one of aspects of the books that make the characters so human (who thought The Wicked Witch of the West could be so human??) is their sex lives (and corresponding drama).

A definite good read.

This book is intresting but to some like me is very difficult to grasp the concept of. The lands are undoubtly fiction but given the delicious texture of the words, MAKING YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE THERE!! This book does contain some "adult content" so I dont advise it for early teens but probably from around 16 ^? All in all it was a very entertaining and by the end I felt bad for my previous opinion about the witch from the west!

I have enjoyed this book. I have long been a fan of the Wizard of Oz and picked this book up off that interest. I laughed out loud more times than I can count. It is serious, political, romantic, but oh so funny. The reading level is comfortable and its hard to put down. I breezed through it in a week, that's with 5 kids, a husband and a job. Strongly recommended.