Name: Was
ISBN: 9780140178722

Geoff Ryman

This haunting, wildly original novel explores the lives of several characters entwined by The Wizard of Oz--both the novel written by L. Frank Baum and the strangely resonant 1939 film. Was traverses the American landscape to reveal how the human imagination transcends the bleakest circumstance.

A Novel

Mary Rose Luksha

I would have liked to give this book 3 1/2 stars because I think the ending could have been different, but I loved the book as a whole so I went up to 4 instead of down to 3. I'm gonna tell you why but there's gonna be A SPOILER.

I loved the writer's style. His prose about pioneer Kansas, and the plains, was beautiful and sad and I think he captured the American spirit very well. I also liked that each different section had its own stylistic nuances, but was held together with an overall tone.

*THE SPOILER*

My problem with the ending: I won't go into details, but the real Dorothy runs away and gets caught in a twister? (I wasn't sure if the twister was real or imagined?) And has a "twister dream" I guess you could call it. The imagery went a little far in my opinion, and I just couldn't get behind it. A theme of the book is reality vs. fantasy so I get what the author was trying to do, and it's a fine line to walk, or to write about. I was with him throughout the whole book, I suspend my disbelief easily and happily (pretty much on a daily basis because well...life is hard man), but when you have a book that is partly true and partly fiction, the ending can't go too far either way, and Dorothy's hallucination did. 

*END OF THE SPOILER PRETTY MUCH*

I get it. It's a hallucination, but it's manner of occurring I found jarring. I wish either he had written it differently, or, because it's not Dorothy's actual "ending" I wish he had placed it somewhere else in the book, and then made her ending something more grounded.

Well, I feel like I did a poor job of explaining why I liked and disliked this book, although I normally try not to write spoilers in reviews because I hate reading them, and I tried not to spoil any of the other story lines. But I guess those are just excuses.

Was A Novel