MarysLibrary

The Princess Bride

William Goldman is a brilliant writer, famed for his screenplays (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride.) This novel, The Princess Bride, too is brilliant, in its own way, which is a quirky way, but it appealed to me.

The narrative structure is delightful, especially for those of us who are interested in narrative structure. The very title warns the reader that something is up: The Princess Bride: S Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure: The "Good Parts Version: Abridged by William Golden. Now we know that the book is not an adaptation or abridgement of a book by somebody else but rather written by William Golden himself. What's up?

A framing story is up and it's complicated and a bit of a shaggy dog story. Purportedly, when the boy was 10 and had pneumonia, Goldman's father read the Morgenstern book to him, leaving out a lot. Much later in his life Goldman acquires the book (in English - it is purportedly originally written in Florian - which is a mythical language) and gives it to his own 10-year-old, who hates it. When the adult Goldman looks at the text he realizes it badly needs editing.

This is the basic story, but as he works on the book and contracts to write a screen play he discovers there are complicated issues with the Morgenstern estate which has already asked Stephen King to write the screenplay and to edit the second book, which, mind you doesn't exist, nor does the Morgenstern estate or the author Morgenstern himself. Goldman's comments about the book and the purported abridgement are heavily larded through the story to great comic effect.

There's a lot more of this, in fact about a third of the book is taken up with it (the book is about 500 pages long.) I love it all. Alas many do not.

Now to the story. Westley, the Farm Boy, falls in love with the proud but beautiful farmer's daughter Buttercup. She is noticed by the evil Count Rugen and recommended to equally evil Prince Humperdinck as his bride. She is taken off to the castle for three years of princess lessons while Westley runs away, heartbroken that he cannot have his beloved.

Three years later and Humperdinck is ready to marry Buttercup when three men kidnap her: the criminal mastermind, Vizzini; the incomparable swordsman, Inigo; and the giant, Fezzik. When all seems lost up pops a masked man to attempt to save her (who is actually the Dread Pirate Robert's valet.)

It gets a lot more complicated than that. And for me remains funny and romantic, satiric and adventurous. I read it because my book club chose it last month and I'm delighted as I wouldn't have read it on my own and I wouldn't have wanted to miss it.

Newbery Winner, Flora and Ulysses

Kate DiCamillo's Flora and Ulysses won this year's Newbery medal and again as so often in the past I'm dissatisfied with the choice of the judges. The story is choppy, loose ends are left hanging, none of the characters is easy to like, and as so often in children's literature these days, adults are either evil (Flora's mother actually puts out a hit on Ulysses), neurotic and flaccid (her father repeatedly says "Hello, I'm George Buckman. How do you do"), or simply emotionally unavailable to the children.

The story: Tootie, who does little else than read poetry, is Flora's next-door neighbor. A man, who may be her husband but we aren't told and he disappears immediately, gives her a super new vacuum cleaner called the Ulysses 2000X. When she turns it on it sucks up most everything in its path, including the man's pants and a squirrel, Ulysses.

Ulysses doesn't actually get swallowed. But he loses much of his hair and as so often happens in situations like this, he emerges from the machine with supernatural powers. Super-squirrel.

Flora's mother, a romance novel writer, wants the squirrel gone, probably because Ulysses demonstrates that he can write poetry, poetry much better of its kind than his arch-nemesis' novels. She hands George Buckman a shovel and a burlap bag and commands him to hit the squirrel over the head with the shovel, put him in the bag, and bury him.

Adventures ensue, and we meet a truly wicked cat, Mr Klaus, and a truly delightful lady, Dr Meescham, a wise woman who, it is hinted, survived the Holocaust. A kidnapping, a midnight search for the victim, and a change of heart and we have our happy ending, a requisite of a children's book. But this reader has the deep suspicion the author would have preferred to leave the story unresolved.

Skip it and go back to DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie, which was a 2001 Newbery honor book (it should have won), or The Tale of Despereaux, the 2004 Newbery winner.

A Perfect Match by Jill McGown

"I didn't mean to!"

That's all Chris, who stumbled into his friends' house drunk and disheveled, would say. "I didn't mean to!"

Didn't mean to what? That question becomes more than curiosity to Helen and Donald Mitchell when the police come calling to report a woman was murdered the night before after quarreling with Donald and leaving with Chris.

This first of Jill McGown's Lloyd and Hill mysteries was published in 1983. It has a clever twist, but I figured out who did the murder and how it was done fairly early on. The detectives go about solving the murder in a leisurely fashion and there is little violence or suspense (both negatives for me) to detract from the intellectual puzzle.

What makes A Perfect Match different is the beauty of the language. McGown writes lyrically.She ends each chapter from the point of view of the wildlife who have seen things but of course aren't talking about it.

I plan to request the next book in the series on ILL when I go to the library tomorrow.