Fred Said . . .

I admit that I got interested to read this book because I really like the movie version (starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, directed by Steven Spielberg). Even after I read all of this book, I still cannot believe that this whole thing really happened.

I have a problem with the age issue. Can a teenager really concoct and accomplish the amazing fraudulent schemes as depicted in this book (and movie)? I already found it unbelievable when I watched the movie, but I explained it all with cinematic license. Reading his supposedly actual account of details on how he did those fantastic plots, like the fake doctor scam, the fake lawyer scam (though he says he passed the Bar exam), and of course, his incredible fake PanAm pilot scam, makes everything more unbelievable!

One of my favorite scenes in the movie was how he formed his own fake crew of stewardesses from high school students was quite cute and funny on screen, but reading the chapter on how he actually did it in detail makes those events downright preposterous! He even detailed how he brought them all over Europe for several days. How can that be possible?

The last two chapters of the book were not included in the movie, and these were his incredible details of his incarcerations, one in France and the other in Sweden. I can see why these were not included. This part is all exaggerated fiction if you ask me. These extremes in the contrast of a prisoner's experience in each country's penal system was so ideal in the build up of dramatic tension, it simply could not have happened this way in real life.

Oh but don't get me wrong. The book was well written. It was funny and exciting like the movie, in its own way. But I really had trouble believing that this all actually happened in real life as he described it. Is the master con-man conning us all over again by wanting us to believe that all of these fantastic adventures of his really happened? I'm sorry but I have to take the "true story" part of the book with skepticism.