Wicked

I finally finished reading "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" by Gregory Maguire today. I started reading it on my trip to Florida back in late December! Now to be honest, I really only read a few hours during the long car ride and only while there was sunlight. But I still managed to get more than half-way. Mind you the book is over 400 pages but when I got back, I kinda stopped reading and got back to my regular life with school and work and such.
Come February I come across this unfinished book and wanted to finish it but instead I had the great idea of reading the original Wizard of Oz in which this "Wicked" novel is based on. The Wizard of Oz was a much easier read and I finished reading that in February (I actually wrote a post of it on here as well. However, when I finished reading the Wizard of Oz I didn't go straight back to reading "Wicked" - I ended up neglecting that book yet again! A couple of weeks ago though, I finally picked up the book again and this time I was determined to finish it! I don't have much free time as I now work full-time but I usually squeeze in some reading on the bus to and from work and sometimes during my break.
Finally, I finished reading the book today as I was pretty much bedridden away after my surgery! This has  officially been the longest its ever taken me to finish a novel ever!
I did enjoy it - it really goes into depth into the concept of evil and makes you think twice about evil being so obvious; at points it makes you think that evil doesn't even exist. I say this because the novel is based of the Wicked Witch of the West - a character from the Wizard of Oz who seems so obviously evil and deserving of her death - yet this book describes her whole life in such detail and connection that you really become sympathetic towards this so-called "witch" and see that she is merely the consequence of a series of complex situations. On the downside, I did find that the storyline was dragged on a little too far. The novel starts with even before the birth of this "witch" and just continues describing her whole life as she grows up and goes to school, and so on and so on, all in great detail! Hence why it took me so long to finally finish this novel! It wasn't one of those novel that kept who hooked and wanting more. There were a few pages that I felt compelled to continue reading but once I did put it down, it was easy not to pick it up again.
I did enjoy the ending though - it was both expected (since I already knew the ending from the Wizard of Oz) and yet unexpected at the same time. I especially like how the author of Wicked didn't make Dorothy out to be the victim - from the beginning I actually thought that the author would but didn't much like the idea of it as I am so used to remembering Dorothy as a sweet innocent girl and so I did appreciate how the author let Dorothy keep that innocence and I honestly felt for the Wicked Witch whom I honestly don't think was Wicked at all in this novel.
All in all, I did enjoy this novel and I'm curious to see what the Broadway performance is like (I'm sure they cut out A LOT of "little details")