May Books 20) Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire

An enjoyable revisiting of The Wizard of Oz, interpreting the sad story of Elphaba, who is born with green skin and grows up through the complex political situation in Oz after the Wizard's coup d'état, only to find that after her sister's tragic death in a bizarre meteorological accident, the legacy she had always been promised (a pair of beautiful slippers) was casually given away to a stranger. Elphaba's story ends with a tragic misunderstanding about a bucket of water. As a result of reading Rhetorics of Fantasy I have realised that immersive tales like this are not always for me, but this was fun.