The last time I went to the library, I saw a book in the new releases section by one of my favorite authors. It seemed to be the first book in a new series, so I grabbed it.
As I was reading it, I realized several things.
1.
I really like this book.
2.
Even though this is the first book in a new series, I missed the last book of the last series, and this book is directly related to that book.
3.
I quit reading the last series because I wasn't enjoying the third book. I didn't much care about the fact that I hadn't finished the third book or read the fourth book.
4.
I must be some sort of literary rebel.
Here is what I found out/confirmed that I already knew, after I finished the book.
The first series is called The Wicked Years, and the books are as follows:
1. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
2. Son of a Witch
3. A Lion Among Men
4. Out of Oz
Wicked is one of my most favorite books ever, and was the first book by Gregory Maguire that I bought. I have read it several times, and it is on my shelf now, along with Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. I read Son of a Witch, but I didn't like it enough to buy it. I started reading A Lion Among Men, but I couldn't finish it. I didn't like it at all. So, of course I never read Out of Oz.
But it turns out that the ending of Out of Oz is the beginning of The Brides of Maracoor. I'm considering going back and reading the whole series again, and seeing if A Lion Among Men is as bad as I remember it. Maybe I will like it more now.
However, I'm going to read a different book first. I stopped in the Friends of the Library book store, and found a Gregory Maguire book that I had never read on the shelf for $1. So I bought it.
Next up, I will be reading Lost. The story of Ebenezer Scrooge, as it were.
But, first!
Here are some of my favorite parts of The Brides of Maracoor.
The first lines:
"Sing me, O Muse, the unheroic morning. When the bruised world begins to fracture for them all. Sing me the cloudless dawn that follows a downright shroud of a night."
This bit about beauty and philosophy:
"Was Maracoor Spot beautiful? The brides who lived there couldn't say. It was the only home they'd ever known. No one had ever left except in death. Standards of beauty -- like those of truth, or justice -- are arrived at by the practice of making comparisons.
Another word for poverty of choice is innocence."
This bit about death and spirit guides:
"...she said, 'I wonder if we are dead.'
'It only feels like death,' said the Goose, making no effort to suppress a yawn.
'No, I mean it,' said Rain. 'How would we know what death is? It may be like this. It may be this. Wherever we came from in our past, here we are in a secret and puzzling present. Could death be like this? How would we even know?'
'What did you have for supper? Is it disagreeing with you? You're sounding deranged, you realize.'
'You are my guide,' said Rain. 'My spirit guide. Is that it?'
'My mama didn't raise me to be anyone's spirit guide but my own.' The Goose was huffy. 'I don't see you paying me a salary for this, by the way.'"
(Sidebar: I think spirit guides should unionize for better wages.)
This bit about birds and myths and the good of panic:
"Scattered volleys of tiny and fiercely energetic birds swooped down from the treetops, feasting on bugs at the level of the crown of his head. But the birds became agitated. They began to pester him, to make small feints, as if wanting threads of his thinning hair to weave into their nests. Several of them scraped him with their beaks as they passed.
They were a species unfamiliar to him. Blue and silver -- it was hard to tell. Blue in the approach, silver in departure, or blue and silver in turn, or separately? They moved so fast he could hardly see the wings, like hummingbirds. Blue and silver hummingbirds. Maybe the blue was male, the silver female? What were they after?
Blue and silver witches in a storm.
The moment he thought that -- though was it poetry, premonition or observation? -- he became weirdly more serene. If the world of folktale were cracking open, and if manticores were indeed waking up from the stone sleeves in which they slept, and if the djinni-harpies of nursery legend were at play, what good would the panic of a mortal do? Or what harm, for that matter? The djinni-harpies would bat him forward, toward rescue or doom. He was going that way anyway."
This bit, that seems to explain how people end up joining cults:
"Did she want to be a bride of Maracoor? To learn to submit to the authority of routine? To bully her own feet into bleeding, to give up choice, to take up a mission in which she couldn't yet believe?
Even put that way, Rain wasn't sure. Perhaps she did. Perhaps this was what she had been seeking.
Passivity. Regularity. A dulling of other pains. Distraction.
A further shedding of her identity, even deeper than amnesia had yet achieved.
The animal unblinking stillness of a hare in a trap, as the poacher draws near. The paralysis before the inevitable.
Choosing death before death chooses you."
This bit about home life and domestic matters:
"It felt ordinary to be fatherly, it felt consoling to be omniscient in minor matters. He was big, they were small. His strong arms lifted them across the stream, and when one of his feet slipped got wet in the bargain, and he cursed, they screamed in delight at the collapse of patriarchy.
The therapy of the domestic."
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