Surrounded by posters, buttons and Playbills promoting Wicked, the wildly successful play based on the novel he wrote a decade ago, Gregory Maguire sits in his home office and speaks softly but with intense emotion about the political disenchantment that compelled him finally to write a sequel, Son of a Witch. "I wrote the first draft in about 10 weeks," he says, "and the motivation was anxiety from the election and then the depression afterward. I thought, 'I have to go back to Oz.' "
Writing the book, which ReganBooks is publishing this week, drew Maguire back into a familiar fictional world. It also brought back something of his Zen-like creative writing process, which had been altered, in part, by his family. "When I wrote Wicked, it was a great storm. I felt like I was channeling that tornado and it came out in five months. I now have such great draws on my time and energy that my mind uses its memory functions and its moral compass functions to be a good father."
In real life, much has changed since Maguire wrote Wicked. The author, 51, and his partner of eight years, Andy Newman, 50, an oil painter, have lived in the Boston area for years. They met at an artists' retreat in the Adirondack Mountains, adopted children shortly thereafter, and were legally married under Massachusetts law in June 2004. The political firestorm around gay marriage and child rearing is part of what inspired Maguire's channeling of Liir, the forgotten son who is the subject of Son of a Witch.
Still, Maguire says he isn't interested in whether anybody thinks his lifestyle is "normal." What he cares about is "bringing a good, healthy life to children who otherwise might not get it." The family lives in a two-story colonial with a screened front door and backyard flower garden. On a recent afternoon, the kitchen table is cluttered with crayon drawings, coloring books, and the remnants of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Despite challenging schedules—Maguire is going on an extended book tour this fall and Newman will be in Europe selling artwork—the couple does not have a nanny. "We could afford one now, but we don't do it because we said to ourselves: if we're going to adopt children and have a family then we are going to have to learn to accept the work that it takes. We don't want children like Gucci handbags that make us look prettier and make us look like better people."
Maguire strives to give his children a life of security that he denies Liir, the protagonist in Son of a Witch. Liir is the mysterious son of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, whose death left him abandoned. What happens to Liir in the aftermath, for Maguire, is about more than just the loss of a mother. "Like Wicked, Son of a Witch has so much in it that it might take two to three passes to recognize." Though he doesn't belabor the point, Maguire suggests that Liir's plight, and the ways in which the characters in Oz's various social strata respond, can be seen as "a reflection of what's going on internationally and within American society."
Published 10 years to the day that the original was released, Maguire says the sequel was as much a joy to write as the original had been. Back then, his agent found the first third of Wicked so "captivating" that Maguire completed the manuscript in a "white heat" while living in London. "Judith Regan jumped on it, made an offer within a day and gave me seven hours to accept it. I waited 90 minutes to pretend that I was thinking about it, then I said yes!"
Mirror Mirror as well as Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister are among the books that followed, and although both did well, neither took off the way Wicked did. Though Son of a Witch is being promoted with an ambitious 29- stop tour, Maguire doesn't anticipate a Broadway adaptation. "The stage play of Wicked ends in a slightly different box than the book. Son of a Witch begins at the end of Wicked the novel, not at the end of Wicked the play. Maguire admits that the adaptation of his story from book to stage took some getting used to. "I saw the ways in which the plot was being boiled down and the one or two twists that veered wildly from my novel," he says. "It took me a couple of weeks to recognize that those changes were not only valid, but they were also fair in finding a new way to talk about the pathos and the heartbreak that is at the core of my story."
Of all the characters in his novels, Maguire says he identifies with only a few. "Liir is a lot more me than Elphaba is; although Elphaba's my hero," he says. "She's all of my favorite female artists rolled up into one; and braver, and stronger, and more determined than I see myself. Liir, on the other hand, is how I was when I was 23, stumbling around, embarrassingly earnest—and ignorant of the limits and reaches of my passion and my capabilities."
Neither character would get Maguire's vote for Most Likely to Succeed in Today's World: "I think Elphaba would be just as crucified now as she would have been 10 years ago. I don't think she'd be able to make it. It would be the minor character of Nanny, both from Wicked and Son of a Witch, who'd be able to make it down the street unscathed because she is both loving and corrupt."
On his own accomplishments, Maguire speaks with characteristic modesty. "I think that if you amortize out the success that I've had the last couple of years over my 27 years as a published writer, it just barely comes out to a living wage. I look at that as a way to keep my feet on the ground. But in fact, every once in a while, I do find myself walking about three inches off the ground for a few minutes, until some kid comes by and bites my ankle, and I'm back down!"
The "ankle biters" are Maguire's three young children: Luke, seven, Alex, six, and Helen, four, whom he and Andy adopted from Guatemala and Cambodia.
As for what's next, Maguire has two projects in the works, both children's books. One is an expansion of a story he wrote for the Boston Globe about a rogue tooth fairy. The other is a short book for kids "ostensibly about the tsunami but more urgently," Maguire says, "about accident contingency, tragedy, suffering and survival, in a way accessible to an eight-year-old. My model for it is something like The Little Prince—a simple story that resonates on a lot of layers."
Piechota is a fiction writer living in Boston.
