Sunday, September 26, 2010

The Princess Bride, William Goldman

"What's it about? Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles."
I am tempted to leave my description of the plot there, as whoever wrote the jacket copy of this edition was really good at his/her job.  :D Plus, most people have seen the movie already, so they know what happens! Yeah, I'll leave the plot description there.

I'd seen the movie before I read the book, and I was rather surprised on reading the book to get the narrator's long ruminations on how love was basically impossible. One of the big points in the book is that Buttercup and Westley are in love, true love, which is something almost as rare as Buttercup's beauty.

This annoyed me.

I have witnessed many long marriages that are happy, loving, and even cringe-ingly passionate. (Okay, if it was your parents, you wouldn't want to know either. That's all I'm saying.) The whole clever OH AREN"T WE SO CYNICAL thing vexed me mightily.

BUT, the overall story still amuses me. :D I like the old-school adventure, and I really really like the fact that we go more into depth with Miracle Max, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya, as they were my favourite characters in the movie.

It was certainly very engrossing, I was just vexed and stressed out by certain aspects of the story. And I gave it four stars out of five.

P.S. The torture scenes creeped me the ross out. GAH.

2 comments:

Bahnree said...

Oh yeah I was a pain when you were reading that, huh? Whoops.

Ermmmmm yeah the torturing was gross. I don't remember the cynicalness, it's BEEN TOO LONG. Must read again. But I remember loving the Inigo parts. :D Also the ending still makes me laugh when I think of it.

Snazel said...

I think you weren't a pain so much as I was freaking out WAYY too much. ;P

Inigo is awesome beyond belief. Fezzik just makes me sad a lot!

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