Mosa's Book Club:: WICKED and Ramsay
So I’ve been trying to read and in the past month I was able to finish two books: WICKED and a Gordan Ramsay Bio named “Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen”.
WICKED by Gregory Macguire
I believe most of you are familiar with the book: the OZ story told from the point of view of the wicked witch of the west. And most of you are familiar with the musical comedy that sprouted from this story. I wanted to read WICKED for a long time-- before its popularity and the conception of the musical. In fact, little Joanne from Blake Street was reading it once and I was interested in it then. So, what 4 years later? I finally read it.
Right off the bat it was completely different that what I had expected. Of course I didn’t think it would be as silly and comedic as the musical, but I did expect it to be somewhat on the lighthearted side if not earnest and entertaining. It was a complete opposite. This was a heavy, very serious almost somber book. It was incredibly intellectual-- or least it tried to be, heavy in the SAT vocab and prose. It was unexpectedly filled with extreme prejudice and racism (some I expected with her being green and all but not all that was involved), tyrannical political systems, heavy into religious conflicts not-to-mention explicit and sometimes weirdly perverted sexual content.
Shock aside, I was intrigued by the character Ephabla (Wicked Witch of the West to ya’ll), and her progression from birth to death. I was excited and interested with the building to the climax to the final fateful end we all know through out the whole book. Unfortunately, the ending was sourly disappointing.
This beguiling and intriguing character that fought through racial and physical bias, political and biological segregation, terrorism and self determination and evolution was reduced a “witch” suddenly going hysterical and insane from the death of her sister and arrival of a one dimensional annoying Dorothy who ends up killing her by accident. The author seemed to rush the ending, failing miserably and leaving many questions and plot lines unfinished and unanswered. It was as if the author gave up on his own complex web with a pathetic frizzled and fizzled ending
WICKED was a good story with a promise of a fabulous point of view only to be completely ruined by a pitiful ending. There is a sequel to this book “Son of a Witch” which I am considering reading only to see if the awful ending of the first could be saved.
Roasting in Hell's Kitchen by Gordon Ramsay
This autobiography is written by Gordon Ramsay the famed chef of Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. At first I didn’t like the “asshole” that Ramsay seemed to be, the more I watched his US shows the more I started to like him. Not until seeing his show “The F word” on BBCA that I started to admire him. The “F Word” not only shows him in the kitchen but at home and brings a more personal side and point of view of coarse chef who is really a sweetheart deep down.
Reading this autobio, you learn that Ramsay had an extremely poor and horrible childhood with an abusive alcoholic dead beat father and a mother who tried to make the best of things for him as his three siblings. His older sister got away in her teens by being sent to a family members farm because she stood up to her dad; Ramsay almost made it as a pro football (that’s soccer) player until an injury had him look elsewhere--the kitchen; his younger brother became a drug addict (with his dad’s help) who has now disappeared; and his youngest sister got pregnant at 15 to which Gordon believed was her only way out of the house at the time.
It was a tough climb to the top but he was bitterly determined to make it. Reading this you have a new respect for the man and the extreme passion he has for his craft. Yeah he can be an asshole, but its mostly to make a point and get the attention of the people he’s yelling at. Coming up from nothing, it is an easy, sometimes entertaining read as told by Gordon Ramsay.