Rating: 
Summary: An Epic Journey
Review: This book takes you back to a "what if" imaginative look at another side of THE WIZARD OF OZ &/or the Broadway Musical, WICKED. I was a little skeptical about this book. However, I had to read it as friends (Antonio Convit & Tim McGraw) gifted the book to me on my birthday: 5/26/2003). Then I was swept away during a flight from Los Angeles to Miami to Barbados as I completed the book. I really thought the author gave sound advice in terms of living life in a happier way. "Perhaps when you are a bit older, you will also learn to be wiser" is in fact a line in the book. I loved the surprise connections and heartfelt sad moments...I can't tell anymore because it could ruin a new readers journey. I highly recommend this one.
Rating:
Summary: An Epic Journey
Review: This book takes you back to a "what if" imaginative look at another side of THE WIZARD OF OZ &/or the Broadway Musical, WICKED. I was a little skeptical about this book. However, I had to read it as friends (Antonio Convit & Tim McGraw) gifted the book to me on my birthday: 5/26/2003). Then I was swept away during a flight from Los Angeles to Miami to Barbados as I completed the book. I really thought the author gave sound advice in terms of living life in a happier way. "Perhaps when you are a bit older, you will also learn to be wiser" is in fact a line in the book. I loved the surprise connections and heartfelt sad moments...I can't tell anymore because it could ruin a new readers journey. I highly recommend this one.
Rating:
Summary: An Epic Journey
Review: This book takes you back to a "what if" imaginative look at another side of THE WIZARD OF OZ &/or the Broadway Musical, WICKED. I was a little skeptical about this book. However, I had to read it as friends (Antonio Convit & Tim McGraw) gifted the book to me on my birthday: 5/26/2003). Then I was swept away during a flight from Los Angeles to Miami to Barbados as I completed the book. I really thought the author gave sound advice in terms of living life in a happier way. "Perhaps when you are a bit older, you will also learn to be wiser" is in fact a line in the book. I loved the surprise connections and heartfelt sad moments...I can't tell anymore because it could ruin a new readers journey. I highly recommend this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Bleak
Review: This book was fascinating; I did not want to put it down. The author has a wonderful writing style. He ties together a number of disparate but connected storylines seamlessly. However, I found all these stories to be almost relentlessly bleak. This book left me depressed. If only this talented writer would turn his talent to writing something with a little more hope!If you want to read an intelligent, well-written novel, based on the story of Oz (from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West) that is also great fun, I would highly recommend _Wicked_ by Gregory MaGuire.
Rating:
Summary: I've read it over and over! Stays with you forever!
Review: This book weaves the lives of a 19th century pioneer girl and a 20th century actor/historian who is quickly succombing to the ravishing affects of AIDS and his feverish compulsion to find the 'real Dorothy'. Jonathon is simply one of the most beautiful and generous characters I've ever encountered in a work of fiction. Dorothy Gael will haunt you forever. The ending is pure magic realism. Intertwined with Jonathon's and Dorothy's stories are insights into the life of 'Baby Frances' Gumm later to become the legendary Judy Garland. This is one of the very few novels I have bothered to purchace in hardcover and it holds a place of honor in my personal collection.
Rating:
Summary: Dense, Disturbing, & Difficult, but Lyrical and Moving
Review: This dense and disturbing novel offers a look into the life of one Dorothy Gael of Kansas, Ryman's imaginary inspiration for the well-loved Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz, and into a bevy of other characters whose lives are touched (directly or indirectly) by her. His Dorothy doesn't have a happy story, and for most of the novel misery carries the day. It is softened by the depths of character and a few moving exemplars of compassion. Wrapped within the novel is a fascinating glimpse into the history of the book and the movie-from its disreputable and unsavory youth to its arrival as a full-blown American classic.
"Was" is not going to be universally appreciated. It is difficult. More than once I found myself reminded of James Joyce; there's a lot going on, and the language isn't always easy to penetrate. The book has something to say about human nature, the way the world and other people break us. Society's response to difference and pain. Homosexuality, child abuse, even the enfeeblement of the aged-the miseries of the human condition are shunned for their power to infect.
I can't say that I always enjoyed this book, though I'm glad I read it. I found it very well written. The characters were in my opinion completely believable. Ryman exhibits a compassion for everyone he writes here, from the least sympathetic to the most. He seems to really understand what drives human beings to the ways they behave, and, unlike the society he represents, he's willing to look at them unflinchingly. I did find the narrative jumps sometimes a little tough to follow; the book required more work than it always rewarded in that regard. But that's in keeping with the rest of this novel, which doesn't spoon-feed you answers. What's the purpose of all this misery? Perhaps it is so that we, like one of the characters, can say, "I'm going to have to do something about all of this."
In this book, in this world, there are Dorothies aplenty, shattered souls who need our help. This resonant novel is a powerful reminder of that fact, an incentive to let them know they are loved.
Through most of this novel I would have called this a 4-star, maybe even a high 3--but I found the final section so gripping and the conclusion so powerful that I wouldn't be doing it justice to give it less than a 5. It may not make its way to your list of classics, but it deserves its placement on mine.
Rating:
Summary: An intricate and captivating interweaving of fact & fiction!
Review: This is one of my absolute favorite books. Since I am a big fan of Baum's Oz-series, I understood all of Mr. Ryman's references to anything that was Oz-related. His story is very well-written and the author takes the lives of 3 individuals (the "real" Dorothy Gael [sic], Judy Garland, and an actor named Jonathan) and weaves them together seamlessly. I liked his darker version of the life of Dorothy and how she meets Baum, who later pens a brighter version of her difficult life. The descriptions of late 19th-century Kansas were extremely vivid. I sympathized with Jonathan, who is dying of AIDS, and found myself hoping that he would find the truth about Dorothy's life in Kansas. Mr. Ryman is a very talented writer and after reading _Was_ he has become an instant favorite. A must-read for anyone who likes Oz or just likes a well-written story.
Rating:
Summary: Magical, will stay with you a long time
Review: This is one of those books that you will remember for a long time, that you will recommend to friends, one that makes the most amazing cocktail party story. It is an elegy to the Wizard of Oz. Several stories intertwine to produce an amazing work. Read about a young teacher in Kansas who meets a young girl and dreams up a better life for her. A young actress named Judy Garland who grows up with a domineering father. A brilliant work.
Rating: 
Summary: Oz Explodes!
Review: This wild novel is a MUST READ for anyone interested in Oz, not that all will love seeing the Oz myth put through Ryman's ringer. WAS refracts the story of Dorothy through a prism to isolate so many different strands and themes from the story we love, encompassing not just wonder and longing, but true earth-bound horror. I found this novel infinitely more intriguing than WICKED, it's an entirely different animal. But Ryman's imagining of Frank Baum's inspiration for Dorothy is stunning, as is the scene of the real Dorothy in the late 1950's confined to an asylum where she will see her first television program as a new attempt at therapy. A haunting book, wild.
Rating:
Summary: the other side of Oz
Review: WAS explores the reality of Oz, what would have happened if Dorothy Gale was a real little girl in the Midwest left to be raised by her elderly aunt and uncle. Auntie Em does not like the daughter of her flashy prettier sister and sets her to work about the farm and kills her dog Toto. Uncle Henry is a child abuser who repeatedly rapes her. The only shining episode in her life is a brief stint of a substitute teacher, L. Frank Baum, who hears her tell her sorrowful life in a grief-stricken essay and decides to immortalize her in his book as a means of somehow making up to her what life has destroyed. In parallel stories, Frances Gumm is transforming into Judy Garland, and the straitjackets that stardom in the early Golden Era has to offer --- diet pills, chest bindings, a strident stage mother. And a gay man named Jonathan in the 1990s who has been obsessed with The Wizard of Oz since childhood searches for meaning in Kansas as he tracks the fate of the real Dorothy before AIDS claims him. This is a captivating read that will stay with you long after you are finished. You will never look at "The Wizard of Oz" the same way again.
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