Gregory Maguire. You might know him from such Broadway plays such as Wicked. If you’re a fan a books, you might have read his two follow-up OZ books or his take on fairy tales (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister or Mirror Mirror). I’m not well versed in the works of Maguire. What I do know is that I would categorize all of his stories as fantasy stories and generally not my cup of tea. However, The Next Queen of Heaven appears to be a vast departure from his typical work and is set in modern times (well, if you still consider 1999 to be “modern”) and centers around a dysfunctional family.

The novel centers around the dysfunctional Scales family after the highly-religious mother, Leonitina, gets bumped in the head with a Catholic statuette and starts speaking in tongues and it’s up to the rebellious daughter, Tabitha, to hold the family together and survive the Christmas season. Along the way there are elderly nuns, rival churches, gay choir leaders, pregnancies, and a flying baby Jesus.

To sum up this book: Fantastic.

I love how outrageous Maguire made this story. It reminds me a little of Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel (you know, without the zombies). The story is set up that it follows many different, distinctive characters that have their own stories that all end up coming together at the end. I love stories that do that. I thought that the story was perfectly paced and balanced and most of all hilarious. It you have the opportunity, you should definitely check out this book.

Note: This book is distributed by Concord Free Press who believe in the Haley Joel Osment method of paying-it-forward. They give away books if you promise to donated something to someone. You pay with karma. Awesome?

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 7:34 pm.
Filed under: Book Review.