I am really, really gullible. I actually believed Goldman until the last page. A hint of scepticism lingered when I had finshed the book, and a quick glance at Wikipedia turned my cheeks red with the realization that I had been suckered in.
I suppose that is a testament to the believability of Goldman's prose. The Princess Bride begins with the narrator explaining how his dad had read this book from his native land to him when he was younger. The narrator grew up, read the book himself, and discovered his father had skipped over all the boring parts of the story. So, to make the book more accessible to readers, he abridged the original, and presented it in this volume.
The novel's plot, interwoven with the narrator's comments and asides, follows Buttercup, the most beautiful girl in Florin, some perhaps medieval kingdom, as she loves and loses, loves and loses again, and finally just loves. It is wildly imaginative and ridiculous, completely hilarious from beginning to end. The action and romance never flag; the story has an entirely modern sensibility.If you've ever seen the movie, the book is exactly like it, but more.
The author totally had me from beginning to end. He affirmed that Florin was a real place; he had been there, met Stephen King's Florinese cousins (that should have tipped me off right there), etc. It all sounded so real.
But, of course, an Internet search amended that. Turns out a florin is just a unit of currency. The narrator's life was completely fabricated. Goldman doesn't have a detached son named Jason. He has two daughters, and he wrote the story because one wanted a bedtime tale about a princess, and the other wanted one about a bride. Voila- The Princess Bride.
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