The Princess Bride

This is such an entertaining modern classic that I wonder how I had missed it all these years, despite its cult status as a novel and a film adaptation. In itself, the tale of a young farm boy Westley and his true love, the beautiful and initially haughty Buttercup, is an exciting and gripping coming-of-age adventure story, but it is the metatext holding it together that really wows me.Besides these two very obvious and attractive leads, there is a trio of misfit assassins, the scheming Italian hunchback Vizzini, the lean and mean Spanish swordsman, Inigo, whose facial scars betray a traumatic past and a vengeful spirit, and a powerful giant wrestler Fezzik. Rounding out the cast of colourful characters is the villainous prince, Humperdinck. Straightforward enough, but is it really?Without giving too much away, Goldman positions his novel as an abridged version of a much older text by S. Morgenstern, capturing all its “good parts,” and leaving out the tedious details of the ponderous original. Suffice to say that the reader would miss out on the full genius of the novel if he were to skip the introduction and the commentary (biographical editorial asides that seem to tell another story) by Goldman because they are integral to the overall work and act as a framing narrative, but the work is so much more than that. You need to read it to discover it for yourself.Included in this 25th anniversary edition is the first chapter of a purported sequel, “Buttercup’s Baby,” which adds to the intrigue and mythology of the original text, and expands the metafictional universe of Goldman’s work. A wholly satisfying read.

I decided to read 'The Princess Bride' because, having not been hugely impressed with Rob Reiner's movie version, I thought, well, since it is an accepted truth that 'the book is always better than the film', then in its pages, the secret must lie. Sadly, I got no great joy. Just as I found the movie to be entertaining but not outstanding, so too did I find the written words telling the tangled tale of Buttercup and her Wesley to be merely satisfactory.The Princess Bride, truth be told, is a rather silly book. But is quite well done as a ‘silly’ book, and of course contains at least two pop-culture catch phrases of high visibility. It is inconceivable that one does not recall Inigo Monteyo and his cry of revenge, not even if one is not quite certain of the meaning of that word.It is also a meta fiction, as Goldman periodically throws open the 4th wall to maintain the fiction that he has abridged a story read to him by his father whilst the 10YO Goldman recovered from illness. Goldman of course has done the modern day reader the great service of excising great swaths of the original Morganstern, where the supposed author has indulged in flagrantly violating the edict of modern fiction to show, not tell. Goldman himself indulges in just such sins in the rather tedious and dull prefaces and afterwords which were part of the edition I read.I wanted to like it more, but must conclude that I find it less than the sum of its parts.

It's a lot like the movie, which I ha e seem so many times it is engrained in my consciousness. In fact, there's not a whole lot here that isn't inn the movie.It is hard not to read the book in the voice of Columbo, or to hear Andre, Mandy and Carrie in the text.The story does seem to end rather abruptly, and I'm not sure what I think about the Buttercup's Baby ending.It is both shocking, pleasing, complete, and unfinished all at once.Enjoyable.

Having come to the movie of The Princess Bride relatively late in life (its and mine!), I didn't realise as the time that it was originally a novel. I've seen the book around in the years since and recently it was on offer for Kindle so I decided to give it a try. Happily the book is at least as good as the film and in fact has an extra dimension to it. The novel is presented as an abridgement of an original by the original author, S. Morgenstern. Chapters of the story are interspersed with passages from Goldman where he talks about having the "original" read to him by his father when he was very ill (like in the book), or where he explains what extraneous material he's abridged, or where he includes anecdotes of his troubles getting the book written and published or the film made. The twist is that all of that is, in fact, fictional as well. The original book he's abridged, the wife and son he describes, and so forth are completely made up. It's very well done and does add to the fun of the overall book.It's been a while since I saw the film so some of the finer plot points I'd forgotten which made the overall story more fun for me as some bits were still a surprise. The tone of the book was much like the film, irreverent and flippant, with constant asides in brackets about random things. The romping adventure plot was still just as much fun and most of the characters got more backstory and development than in the film which made it a richer experience overall.Sadly I felt this version of the novel was let down overall by the Buttercup's Baby sequence at the end. It just didn't work for me, way too much fictional reality where the author wrangled with the Morgenstern estate, met with Stephen King, and so on. That all really dragged for me. The ratio of asides to actual story was also far too high so I didn't really follow what little story there was very well. I also just didn't like the story very much, sadly.But still, that didn't dim my enjoyment for the main work. My recommendation would be to not bother reading Buttercup's Baby if you ever get a version that includes it, as far as I'm concerned it adds nothing of real value or enjoyment.TL:DR version - if you love the movie, you'll love the book too.