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Review 187:
August 2022

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First Published: 1973

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The Author
William Goldman



"The Princess Bride"
by William Goldman.

A swashbuckling adventure fairy story, - Gwynneth’s choice.

Gwynneth first met this story as a film and was taken by it; unfortunately, as a book, it did not meet the high expectations engendered by the film. Anne’s experience was similarly, a progress from DVD to book. But reading the story improved her understanding of the film.

The book has a strange structure starting with the author explaining the story to a child. Whilst the story is “laugh out loud” funny at the beginning, the narrative wanders to and fro across the boundary line between fantasy and reality. The book is mainly fantasy with “Buttercup’s baby” tacked on at the end making the finish of the book quite hard work.

The story line is a good yarn to begin with but weakens roughly mid-way at the festivities and there is little new thinking in the latter half of the book. The writing felt very much like a comic strip and the whole book could have been written and enjoyed in that manner.

The book, hailed as a "cult classic", was generally received as “a light read”, a sort of cross between James Bond and Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

AA Stars: 2.6
PC, 13th August 22.


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