Thursday 19 July 2012

Review: The Princess Bride by William Goldman



The Princess Bride, I've seen the film a couple of times and after picking a book which is a little hard going at times for the last book club (Alone in Berlin), I decided to pick something more light hearted this time. 

The book was more like the film than I would have thought, right down to the little interruptions from the boy, who turns out to be William Goldman himself.

The edition I have features an introduction by William Golding, explaining how he came to do the abridgement of the novel by Morgenstern. As a young boy, he contracted a serious case of pneumonia, which confined him to bed for weeks, during this time, his father pulled out his copy of The Princess Bride and read to him. To this day, William is convinced that this helped him to pull through. After buying the book for his son's birthday, he is a little disgusted that the boy could not make it past the first chapter, he loved so much himself that he wanted his son to adore it too. However it wasn't until he picked up the book himself as an adult that he realised that he had never read it himself, he had only had it read to him by his father. And at this point he also realised that his dad had skipped past a lot of the book, which was filled with histories and 56 pages describing people packing and unpacking suitcases. This is when he decided to do an abridgement of it himself and bring it back to the story that his dad read to him.

I really think this adds to the story, knowing the back story of the author's love of the book made it more personal somehow. When he interupted (as he does quite a lot), it was informative and entertaining, it adds humour to a book which has more than enough already, all in all making it a very enjoyable read which I will be more than happy to pick up again. 


Score: 5/5

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