The Princess Bride
A fairy tale romance that earns its happy ending by nearly destroying everything several times. Westley and Buttercup's love is simple and absolute; the novel's ironic postmodern frame ("the good parts version") somehow makes it more romantic, not less. True love. You keep using that word. Goldman means it.
Every anniversary edition tacks on another introduction until, one reader jokes, the book arrives with “as many forewords as The Return of the King had endings.” Another puts it more bluntly: the front matter runs “fifty pages long and not good” before the story starts, and Goldman's fictionalized narrator fills those pages with bitter asides about his marriage and his son that sour the mood rather than setting it. The leads take the hit too. Readers who love Inigo and Fezzik often admit they “could not stand the main ones, Buttercup and Westley,” finding them flat next to the supporting cast. Lines that land as comedy on screen read oddly stiff transplanted to the page, and the bonus Buttercup's Baby excerpt at the back, previewing a sequel never written, plays as a tease rather than a bonus.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
