Book review

Every major publishing house employs a bevy of designers, photographers and illustrators to go against the grain of the old saw that you can't judge a book by its cover. Gregory Maguire's new novel, "Son of a Witch," uses the pricey gimmick of a cut-away dust jacket to remind readers of the success of his first visit to the land of Oz, "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West." That 1995 book (since turned into a hit Broadway musical) was a rollicking retelling of L. Frank Baum's "Wizard of Oz." Maguire's revisionist take revealed the Witch's true name, Elphaba, and how she came to be misunderstood.

On the dust jacket of the sequel, Elphaba is standing behind her crystal ball, broom in hand. The crystal ball has been die-cut to reveal the face of "Son of a Witch's" main character, Liir. Removing the dust jacket reveals a second illustration on the cover of the book: Liir, also holding a broom. It's a book in Halloween costume; behind the witch's green mask is a normal, everyday guy.

The flaps of the jacket contain a synopsis likely created by a marketing peon or junior editor whose work must be judged by the ancient "toga" standard: it should be long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting. Nothing disappoints a reader more than realizing that the enticements that drew her into a novel have also given away major plot points. "Son of a Witch" takes such disenchantment to new heights by asking us to care about a question of lineage that is answered by the book's title. (It's fun to think of other stories you care about and replace their titles with the central revelation: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" becomes "Monkey with a Machete," the first "Star Wars" trilogy becomes "Darth is my Dad," and "Moby Dick" becomes "Beware of White Whales as They Symbolize Nature and Will Kill You.")

Liir's quest to find his true self is further hampered by the fact that he's in a coma for two-thirds of the book, a hurdle that is easily stumbled over thanks to copious amounts of flashback. The plot is fairly simple: Liir, raised by Elphaba, is without a mentor once Dorothy kills her. Having no family, he travels back to the Emerald City but is denied an audience with the Wizard. Like all young men, he wonders what to do with his life. Uncertainty about his ancestry leaves him unable to embrace Elphaba's legacy and engage in the power struggle for Oz's soul.

Instead he begins a series of wanderings as Oz undergoes multiple regime changes, from the reign of Glinda to a brief rule by a cabal of bankers who use the Scarecrow as their puppet to the despotism of the sacred Emperor. Liir joins the Emperor's army to avoid starvation and quickly finds himself embroiled in atrocities against the starving masses. Throughout, he collects clues about a heritage the title has already made clear.

And as if our hero didn't have enough to deal with, he also labors under cover of pretentious verbiage. Early on in the story, as Liir accompanies Dorothy on her quest to present the Witch's broom to the Wizard, they encounter scores of animals and people who were befriended by Elphaba.

"Oh the shock of it." The Grite clutched his paws and worried them back and forth. "The shock of it! The Witch is dead?"

The wind itself answered in a kind of obbligato descant: The Witch is dead!

In case you're not a music lover, a descant is a counterpoint played above the basic melody and its obbligato-ness means its flavor is essential to the score, much as an oboe can't be replaced by a clarinet without losing something. In a way, it's a perfect description: The wind, with its chill and echo, is essential to understanding the young man's emotions as he repeatedly hears his mother's death discussed. But it's also affected in the way prose can get when an author shouts out his lexicon in, ahem, an orotund bruit.

The fun of "Wicked" was comparing the Wicked Witch we knew to Maguire's woman of complexity and intelligence. In his hands, Oz unfolded as a land both familiar and new — as if the Judy Garland film was just the cover illustration and L. Frank Baum's books merely the synopsis of a rich tale that deserved further exploration. But "Son of a Witch" relegates familiar characters to cameo appearances, focusing instead on Liir, who suffers from the imitative fallacy: His internal lack of direction is expressed in a meandering plot.

That's a shame, given that many of Maguire's books — not only "Wicked," but "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" and "Mirror, Mirror" — were so rousing. His retellings of classic fairytales and modern fantasy make him a one-man trend. All four books share covers so similar they look like a brand, a sign that Maguire has reached the point in his career where his readers have become fans.

But fans have complicated desires; they want artists to continue surprising them while staying true to the original vision. "Son of a Witch" seems to be caught in this bind. Liir doesn't seem to be based on a Baum character, and the fact that he lives in Oz makes little difference to his story. One could easily imagine Liir in contemporary America, wrestling with questions of self and sexuality and trying to find his purpose in life.

"He saw himself sitting there, almost nodding off, more of a man than when he had started out, but still lost, like most young men, and more lost than most. With no sense of trade, no native skill except to make mistakes, no one to learn from, no one to trust, and no innate virtue upon which to rely . . . and no way to see the future."

Just as the witch on the book's dust jacket is meant to obscure the faults of this sequel behind the dry-ice fog of the original, one gets the distinct sense that Liir himself is also a front. Perhaps the Oz setting seems like a fig leaf because it is a fig leaf. Perhaps Maguire didn't want to admit to his fans that he was, essentially, writing a memoir — the story of a man who started out lost, like most young men, and only found himself by embracing the tale of a witch.

Kirk Lynn is playwright-in-residence for Austin's Rude Mechanicals theater collective.

Gregory Maguire

What: Reading and book

signing

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Where: Book People, 603 N. Lamar Blvd.

Information: 472-5050