I got the chance to read The Princss Bride, so I did

Like many people, I grew up with the movie. The quotable lines, the swashbuckling adventure, the perfect romance - it was all burned into my memory. "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya" became a cultural touchstone. "As you wish" was shorthand for true love. And "Inconceivable!" - well, we all know what that means. So when I spotted The Princess Bride at a bookstore, I grabbed it without hesitation, expecting a straightforward novelization of the story I already knew by heart.

What I got was something far more interesting, and far more complex.

The Story Behind the Story

The first thing that strikes you about Goldman's book is the audacious framing device. He presents the novel as his "abridgement" of a classic Florinese tale by S. Morgenstern, a beloved author from his childhood. Goldman claims he's cutting out all the boring parts - the endless passages about Florinese packing customs, the detailed genealogies of minor nobles, the satirical digressions about hat taxes - to give us just the "good parts version" his father read to him as a sick child.

It's all fiction, of course. There is no S. Morgenstern, no original Florinese text, no childhood sick bed where his immigrant father read to him with a thick accent. But Goldman commits to the bit so completely, with such elaborate detail and conviction, that you almost forget you're reading meta-fiction. He includes "notes" about legal battles with the Morgenstern estate, complaints about his troubled marriage, and even a lengthy introduction where he describes tracking down the original book to read to his own son, only to discover how incredibly boring most of it actually is.

This framing transforms the reading experience entirely. Where the movie gives you a grandfather reading to his sick grandson in a simple, sweet frame story, the book gives you Goldman himself as an unreliable narrator, constantly interrupting the narrative to complain, reminisce, or editorialize. He'll stop mid-sword fight to tell you about his father's pronunciation of certain words, or pause a romantic moment to discuss his own failed relationships, or break from a tense scene to explain why the "original" version was even more depressing and he had to change it.

It's cheeky, self-aware, and surprisingly moving when Goldman reflects on what stories mean to us and why we return to them. The device could easily feel gimmicky or pretentious, but instead it adds genuine emotional weight. Goldman's commentary isn't just clever - it's actually about something: the stories we tell ourselves, the way we edit our own memories, and how the tales we love shape who we become.

The Familiar Made Fresh

The core story remains the same adventure you know: Buttercup and Westley's true love separated by apparent death, Buttercup's engagement to the villainous Prince Humperdinck, and Westley's return as the Dread Pirate Roberts. You get Vizzini's smug intellectualism, Fezzik's gentle giant routine, and of course Inigo Montoya's driving quest to avenge his father. The Fire Swamp, the Cliffs of Insanity, the battle of wits - it's all there.

But Goldman's prose adds texture and depth that even the beloved film couldn't quite capture. Inigo's backstory, for instance, hits so much harder on the page. You get the full weight of his decades-long search, his descent into alcoholism, the way his father's death has defined and consumed his entire existence. The movie gives you the iconic confrontation with Count Rugen, but the book lets you live inside Inigo's obsession in a way that makes that final "I want my father back, you son of a bitch" land with even more devastating power.

The Fire Swamp, too, feels more genuinely dangerous in text. Goldman describes the flame spurts, the lightning sand, and especially the Rodents of Unusual Size with visceral detail that makes you feel the claustrophobia and genuine peril. Westley's suffering after being tortured feels more real and awful. Even minor characters get richer treatment - Miracle Max and his wife Valerie are somehow even funnier on the page, their bickering marriage rendered in perfect comic detail.

What surprised me most was how much the book embraces its own artifice. Goldman never lets you forget you're reading a story - he's constantly reminding you of it, pointing out narrative conventions, discussing his "editorial" choices. And yet somehow this makes the emotional moments land even more powerfully. When he pauses the action to tell you why a particular scene matters to him personally, or when he admits he changed something from the "original" because the real version was too sad and he couldn't bear it, you're reminded that stories are constructed, shaped, edited - but also that they're crafted with love and care and genuine feeling.

There's something profound in Goldman's approach. By constantly breaking the fourth wall, he paradoxically makes you care more, not less. His intrusions remind you that someone is telling you this story, that someone chose these moments and these words, and that choice matters. It's the difference between experiencing a tale and being invited into the act of storytelling itself.

What the Book Does Differently

Beyond the framing device, there are substantive differences from the movie that book readers get to enjoy. The Zoo of Death, where Westley is held and tortured, gets much more elaborate treatment - it's a genuinely nightmarish five-level facility with progressively more dangerous creatures, and Goldman's descriptions are both darkly comic and actually frightening.

Character motivations are also more fleshed out. Prince Humperdinck isn't just a villain - he's a specific type of villain, obsessed with hunting and warfare, genuinely brilliant in his own brutal way. His relationship with Count Rugen is more developed, giving you a better sense of the rot at the heart of Florin's government. Even Buttercup, often criticized as passive in the movie, gets more interiority on the page, though Goldman himself ironically comments on her limited intellectual gifts in ways that now read as dated but were clearly meant as satire.

The ending, too, is notably different. Where the movie gives you an ambiguous but hopeful conclusion, Goldman's version is more bittersweet and uncertain. He includes an epilogue discussing the "original" sequel that Morgenstern supposedly wrote, and the challenges of getting it published. It's all fake, but it reinforces the book's meditation on stories and their endings - how we want happy endings even when life doesn't promise them, and how the best stories sometimes refuse to give us easy resolution.

Why It Works

The Princess Bride the book succeeds because William Goldman is a writer who genuinely understands both fairy tales and the people who love them. He knows why we return to these stories, what we get from them, and how they function emotionally even when we know they're impossible. The meta-commentary never feels cynical or superior - it feels like Goldman is inviting us into his own love for the story he's telling.

There's real craft here too. Goldman was a professional screenwriter who understood pacing, dialogue, and character. Every scene moves, every conversation crackles, and even his intrusive commentary is timed perfectly to enhance rather than disrupt the narrative flow. He knows exactly when to get out of the way and let the story breathe, and when to step in with an observation that reframes what you just read.

The book also works because it's genuinely funny. Goldman's voice is witty, self-deprecating, and sharp. His complaints about his marriage, his Hollywood career, and the publishing industry are entertaining in their own right. And the core story itself is stuffed with memorable comic moments that the movie captures but the book expands - Vizzini's overconfidence, Miracle Max's muttering, Fezzik's childlike sweetness, Westley's melodramatic declarations. It's a book that makes you laugh out loud, sometimes at the adventure and sometimes at Goldman's commentary on the adventure.

The Verdict

The Princess Bride the book is not just The Princess Bride the movie in text form. It's a love letter to storytelling itself, full of Goldman's wit, warmth, and genuine affection for the tale he's telling. The meta-commentary could have been insufferable in lesser hands, but Goldman pulls it off with charm and real emotion. He's created something that's simultaneously a perfect fairy tale adventure and a meditation on why we need fairy tale adventures in the first place.

If you loved the movie, read the book.

You'll find the story you know and cherish, but wrapped in something stranger, funnier, more self-aware, and ultimately more moving than you expected. Goldman understood that sometimes the best way to tell a timeless story is to constantly remind us that we're hearing it from someone who loves it as much as we do - someone who needs these stories, who shapes them and is shaped by them, and who wants to share that experience with us.

The book doesn't replace the movie; nothing could. But it does something the movie can't: it makes you think about why stories matter while you're falling in love with this particular story all over again. And that's a kind of magic all its own.

Rating: 9.2 / 10