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.