Was : A Novel

"A moving lament for lost childhoods and an eloquent tribute to the enduring power of art."— The New York Times "Staggeringly original and profound...Extraordinary, wonderful." — Time Out "A startling, stimulating book filled with angels and scarecrows, gargoyles and garlands, vaudeville and violence. Pynchon goes Munchkin, you might say."— Washington Post Book World A haunting novel exploring the lives of characters intertwined with The Wizard of Oz : the "real" Dorothy Gale; Judy Garland's unhappy fame; and Jonathan, a dying actor, and his therapist, whose work at an asylum unwittingly intersects with the Yellow Brick Road. Geoff Ryman is the author of The King's Last Song , Air , The Child Garden , The Unconquered Country , and Paradise Tales . He has lived in Cambodia and Brazil, and now teaches at the University of Manchester, England. "Dorothy Gael, an orphan churning with rage and self-hatred, is repeatedly sexually abused by her Uncle Henry on their Kansas farm. Sadistic, sanctimonious Aunty Em, who dislikes Dorothy's dog Toto, looks the other way. Rewriting the Oz story as a somber gothic fantasy rich in period detail, Ryman casts Baum as a substitute teacher who rescues Dorothy from life as a prostitute on the 1880s Kansas frontier. But Dorothy ends up in a mental institution where, as Old Dotty, she will be discovered in 1956 by Bill Davison, a caring attendant. In a parallel story set in the 1980s, Jonathan, a gay, Canadian-born horror-film actor dying of AIDS, enters therapy with Bill, now a Los Angeles psychiatrist, who instructs him to visualize that he's in Oz to reenact a childhood obsession. Desperately seeking home, various characters--both real (Judy Garland) and fictional--follow the yellow brick roads of their heart's desires and converge in Kansas."--Publisher's Weekly Dotty, old and maybe crazy, sees The Wizard of Oz on TV, and recognizes it as her own story.Was is a haunting novel which explores the lives of characters intertwined with The Wizard of Oz: the real Dorothy Gale; Judy Garlands unhappy fame; and Jonathan, a dying actor, and his therapist, whose work at an asylum unwittingly intersects with the Yellow Brick Road.

Solid backlist title that has consistently sold for 20 years.

Coincidentally: it's a 20th anniversary edition!

Designed to match Ryman's novel The King's Last Song and collection Paradise Tales.
Relays the lives of several characters connected with both the novel The Wizard of Oz and the 1939 film. This includes the story of the "real" Dorothy Gale, the troubled Judy Garland, and Jonathan, an actor dying of AIDS, and his therapist