Sunday Books & Culture
This week’s reviews include Louis Bayard’s imaginative retelling of Oscar Wildes’s story in “The Wildes” and Elphaba’s origin story in Gregory Maguire’s “Elphie.”
The Book Review section is edited by Vanessa Sekinger
THE WILDES
by Louis Bayard
Published by Algonquin Books (September 17, 2024)
Paperback $18.99
Audiobook $15.28
Reviewed by Penny A Parrish
It’s August 1892, and Oscar Wilde has brought his wife Constance and their oldest son Cyril to Norfolk, England so the famous author and playwright can escape the noise of London and finish writing A Woman of No Importance. But just having family around would be too boring and quiet, so Oscar also invited his mother and friend Arthur Clifton, an attorney, and his wife. And one more guest, who is supposed to stay only for a few days: Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie. Vyvyan, Wilde's youngest son, has whooping cough and has been left behind.
These people make up Bayard’s book, which he calls The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts. The first act is described above, and takes up the majority of the book. We meet each of the characters, capture the witty conversations between Oscar and his wife, and feel her loneliness as each night Oscar gives her a brief kiss on the cheek and retires to his own room. Mother Wilde is an eccentric and terrifying creature, especially for young Cyril. Clifton is more interested in Constance than his wife. Bosie, a young dandy, is sixteen years younger than Oscar. But here in Norfolk, their relationship flourished. And the family was forever ruined with the scandal that followed.
Act 2 takes place in September 1897. Constance has taken the boys to Italy and changed their last name to Holland so they will not carry their father’s shame. Oscar was found guilty of gross acts of indecency (homosexuality) in May of 1895 and sentenced to prison with two years hard labor. The boys never saw their father again.
Act 3 finds Cyril in the trenches of France during World War I. His brother Vyvyan is close by serving as a translator. Act 4 finds Vyvyan at a theatre performance in London in 1925. Later that evening, he finds himself face to face with Bosie, Lord Douglas and a conversation ensues.
Act 5 is Bayard’s creation of what might have happened back in Norfolk back in August 1892, had Constance faced up to her husband’s sexuality and set down rules and boundaries between her, Oscar, and Bosie.
Bayard has done intense research on the Wilde family, and builds the book around the love between a husband and wife, parents and children, and between a man and his male lover. Invented dialogue so closely resembles Wilde’s sense of humor in his plays and poems, that you can almost hear him saying the words. This book reminded me of Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. In that book, the author imagines spirits conversing around Abraham Lincoln as he deals with the death of his young son Willie. In the final act of The Wildes, the author imagines a scenario led by Constance, “a woman of no importance,” that might have kept the family together and prevented the trials, embarrassment and scandals that to this day are connected to the name Oscar Wilde. Full of humor and warmth and regret, this is a book to savor.
Penny A Parrish is a long-time book reviewer and artist. Learn more about her by visiting her page at Brush Strokes Gallery, which is in downtown Fredericksburg.
ELPHIE
By Gregory Maguire
Published by William Morrow (available March 25, 2025)
Hardcover $21.99
Audiobook $17.83
Reviewed by David Arndt
Since Wicked, Gregory Maguire’s Elphaba has long captured the hearts of readers with her fascinating story as the misunderstood Wicked Witch of the West. With the three sequential novels, this incredible author expanded the Wicked world and continued its tale through the next generations. He’s created dynamic and incredible lives and adventures for Glinda, Liir, the cowardly Lion, and so many more. With Maguire’s newest book in the series, Elphie, he brings the story back to Elphaba and her childhood, recounting the incidents and events that molded Elphaba as she grew up.
Elphie’s upbringing with her itinerant missionary family is chaotic to say the least. Her pastoral father Frex often roams about, seeking converts for the Unnamed God, while her beautiful and sensual mother Melena traipses about listlessly, missing the comforts and pleasures of her family’s rich estate. A sister with no arms and a brother with too much mischievous energy are no great companions for her, while Nanny does her best to raise and teach Elphie about life. Coupled with the impermanence of her family’s house is the randomness of help: servants come and go constantly, running away at the first sign of danger. Only Nanny, stalwart and unmovable, remains steadfastly by.
Coupled with this instability, her parents have a quest that Elphie, due to her youth, doesn’t quite comprehend. Their lives were wracked with guilt over the death of their companion Turtle Heart who was savagely killed in Munchkinland when they were visiting Melena’s family. Offered up as a human sacrifice, the poor Quadling was killed while Melena was giving birth to her second child, the armless Nessarose. After it was safe enough to travel, her family departed for Quadling Country to seek out any family Turtle Heart may have had and offer their condolences and seek their forgiveness.
Hope comes into her family’s life when they meet a cloth merchant who implies that he might have some information about Turtle Heart and his relations. Desperate for any knowledge that might lead to his redemption, Frex forces teenage Elphaba to work for him as his apprentice. The family develops an adapted lifestyle: Frex still seeks converts while Elphaba cuts and measures and folds bolts of cloth, meeting acquaintances who might be able to help her father. Showing the nascent stubbornness that she would grow into later in Wicked, she tries her best to ignore the handsome son of a prominent government official who she finds staring at her one day. Only when he offers to assist her does she begin to let her guard down and let him into her life.
Elphie is an incredible prequel, showing glimpses of Elphaba’s mysterious childhood and the events that forged her distinct personality. Maguire once again creates a beautiful and captivating setting that attracts the readers’ attention. After finishing this novel, die hard fans will flock to pick up Wicked again to continue the amazing story of the misunderstood Wicked Witch of the West.
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