I read Part 4 of "Wicked" yesterday, and this time instead of sitting down to write my diary as soon as I was done, I decided to sleep on it and tackle it today. If you want to know why, follow me below the fold...
My reaction to finishing "In the Vinkus" was to (gently, because my mother raised me to respect books) toss it aside in a semi-snit of frustration. Or maybe the word is dissatisfaction. It happens when I read books that I think are mostly great, but that (IMO) fall short of their full potential. Sigh. And I find that the closer a book gets to achieving true greatness, the more disappointed I am when it falls just that tiny little bit short.
A few goods and bads, in My Humble Opinion (let the value judgments begin!):
Good: Elphaba is finally becoming a person rather than a mysterious icon. We actually start to get a glimpse of how she sees the world, and her place in it. Her encounter with Princess Nastoya shows her "human" side more openly than at any point before in the book. We see her conscience at work, not just in the 'macro' sense as we did in "The City of the Emeralds", but in a very personal sense. She suffers horrible guilt over Fiyero's death, and she's appalled at the thought that she could have, even unconsciously, been the cause of the cook's death.
Bad: Elphaba's conscience and remorse seem to come from nowhere. Not that she doesn't have one, clearly she has a well-formed social conscience, she's got integrity, and she's capable of doing good, even great good. But her reaction to Fiyero's death, at the end of the last section and throughout this one -- I kept asking myself, where the heck did that come from?
Good: I loved Princess Nastoya. "They know I am a beast who chooses magical incarceration as a human over the dangerous liberty of my own powerful form." Wow. She is, other than Elphaba herself (okay, and Turtle Heart) my favorite character in the book to date.
Bad: Princess Nastoya makes a brief appearance and then disappears, and I assume we won't be seeing or hearing anything of her again. Boo, hiss.
Good: Okay, maybe I'm being unreasonable. In Real Life(tm), people (and Animals) come and go from our lives, and someone who impacts us tremendously may or may not stick around for the long haul. Is Maguire's choice to give these amazing characters a short shelf-life in the book an invalid one? Nah. But damn, it's frustrating.
Bad: See above, re: frustrating.
Good: Elphaba's complete lack of connection to Liir. Not "good", per se, but another interesting twist to her character.
Bad: It's pretty inconsistent with her continued grieving over Fiyero (see above). Whatever else I expect of Elphaba, I expect consistency, dammit. Primarily because I think Elphaba expects it of herself.
Just plain puzzling: She can't tolerate water, and we know (even before reading the end of the book) that she's going to be killed by water, so what on earth possessed her to run out into (or as it turns out, onto) the lake to rescue what she thought was a baby? And why, ferpetesake, does the water magically turn to ice? I. Don't. Get. It. (See above re: frustrating.)
Good/Bad: Sigh. The looooong interlude of domestic life at Kiamo Ko with Sarima and her assorted spawn and relatives left me yawning, for the most part. It didn't take long to establish that Elphaba was, in effect, holding herself prisoner to Sarima's refusal to let her confess and ask forgiveness. We get introduced to the Grimmerie, which I suspect will have some kind of meaning to the rest of the book. We get to find out a bit about how Elphaba grows into her role/disguise as the Witch (I did like the notion that she had to practice riding the broom for a while before she got the hang of it). We get to visit Munchkinland again, and get a glimpse of how Nessarose ends up as the Witch of the East. All that's good, but the looong passages about domestic life at Kiamo Ko taught me almost nothing about Elphaba and (as far as I can tell) did nothing to further the story. The political backstory/underpinnings of the book all but disappear, except at the very end of Part 4. Am I missing something?
Good: I'm finally starting to feel a real affinity for Elphaba (despite, not because of, the whole Kiamo Ko domestic scene). It's becoming clear that she still has a lot of learning to do in the area of self-awareness. Throughout the book she's always seemed almost freakishly self-aware, but now I'm seeing her beginning to question whether she is herself good or evil. Very interesting, that.
Okay, so: What do you think about "In the Vinkus"?
Housekeeping: Please note that the Read-Along is going on a brief hiatus due to my overflowing work/travel schedule over the next ten days. We'll return Memorial Day weekend to finish this puppy up with the final part of "Wicked" ("The Murder and its Aftermath"), and will start a new book in June.
Speaking of new books, I've been contemplating some choices: "No Exit" by Jean-Paul Sartre (because it got a number of votes back in the first poll), and "Atlas Shrugged" just because I love that book and would really like to give it a critical re-read, and it also got a fair number of votes back when this whole thing was getting started.
But, I really feel drawn to George Orwell's "1984" right now, partly because of the whole NSA data mining news, and partly because I am in the mood for a good dystopian novel, and this is surely one of the best. Plus, it's been years since I've read it. Let me know what you want to read; we'll have a run-off, if necessary, in two weeks.
Happy reading!