Ranalli, Gina. Chemical Gardens. Lynwood: Afterbirth Books, 2006. 188 p. Paperback. ISBN 0976631067.

Gina Ranalli’s Chemical Gardens, a punk-rock style retelling of The Wizard of Oz, is a hilarious, edgy, and delightfully unpredictable book. It begins when an aspiring band, Green Is The Enemy, drives to San Francisco hoping to get a record deal. An earthquake, registering 8.5 on the Richter Scale, changes everything for punk rockers Ro, Whey, Pawn and Dose. Instead of toughing out 7-11s, coffee, and long stretches of highway, they find themselves in the Seattle underground, surrounded by umbrella-headed creatures and man-eating apples. As they try to return to California in time to get signed by Withering Skin Records, the Wicked Witch of the West Coast pursues Ro, demanding her genuine Sweet Tooth guitar or some of Ro’s nonexistent cash.

One of my favorite things about Ranalli’s book is the way she parodies and modernizes The Wizard of Oz’s story; everything in The Wizard of Oz has a guitar smashing, spiked-haired equivalent. The characters undergo strange transformations once they reach the Seattle underground — Ro becomes Dorothy-like with her plaid dress and curly blonde pigtails, Pawn resembles an updated Tin Man with synthetic arms and metal bones, and Whey metamorphoses from a manly man into a pansy, becoming a modernized Cowardly Lion. These transformations are potent sources of humor, which run rampant throughout the novel. For example, Ro marvels at how, in becoming Dorothy, she’s turned black and white like a 1930's film. Pawn’s robotic reactions to the other characters’ transformations are also effective — when she sees her friends change from wild to mild, like when Dose becomes a cloud of gasoline fumes, she examines them, processes, and replies, “How interesting!”

In spoofing The Wizard of Oz, Ranalli doesn’t limit her comedy to Dorothy and Toto. Take Chad, who is both a warlock and a caricature of the quintessential surfer dude. When Wanda Drago, the Wicked Witch of the West Coast, demands Ro’s guitar, Chad tells her, “You’re, like, spewing all this negative energy and it’s bumming everyone out” (32), and later, when he kisses Ro’s guitar, he explains, “I just gave it some of my happy mojo” (33). Most of the surfer dude and other parodies are accomplished through Ranalli’s use of dialogue, which, generally speaking, depcits character personalities in succinct, edgy, and entertaining ways.

This book is definitely recommended reading for punk rockers and just about anyone else looking for a novel with a distinctive voice and lots of surprises. I thoroughly enjoyed Chemical Gardens and look forward to Gina Ranalli’s future projects.

— Kristina Marie Darling