The Godfather

The Godfather portrays the classic conflict between loyalty to a family and the desire to escape it for a better life.

Michael is a former marine who wants to stay out of the crime business and have a normal relationship with his girlfriend. But family loyalty trumps principle when his father is attacked, his brother killed, and his wife in Italy murdered. It wonderfully shows his slow fall to unfeeling coldness as the price for avenging his family and protecting their empire.

The book has great and colorful characters, especially Don Corleone. He is fascinating because he offsets his violence… show more.

I read it in 1969 when it first came out and recently decided I must re-read what I consider as the greatest novel ever written and the greatest gangster story ever told.

Even the second time around I could not wait to get to the next page to find out what was going to happen as it was that gripping of a story. You loved most of the characters even though they were not the most upstanding citizens, sometimes you actually found yourself rooting for them.

It has stories within the story and that keeps you attached to the characters… show more.

Mario Puzo's finest work has been the influence for hundreds of novels and films alike.

The book tells of Michael Corleone's rise to mafia boss, from a timid young man to a stern, prominent force, who orchestrates New York City's most influential mafia family. After the book and the movie were released, it somehow became cool to become involved with the mafia. Interestingly enough, the word mafia is never in the film.

The film adaption of the book, like the book itself, is regarded as one of, if not, the greatest of all time. The book itself has a bit… show more.

This book was my first foray into the world of gangsters.

Set just after World War Two in the dangerous alleys of the nascent American Mafia, The Godfather tells the story of the first family of American gangster fiction, their fight for survival, and bid for power.

The complex, indelibly drawn characters, including Vito Corleone, his three sons and their families, and “business associates” travel a bloody road of passion and power, conspiracy and crime.

This fictional family, the novel, films, and franchise have been part of my consciousness for as long as I can remember.

It’s not the best… show more.

Fans of the mafia will love this novel. It is about a Sicilian American family in the early part of the twentieth century and their confrontation with other mafia families. It also gives readers an idea of life in post World War II America and the importance of family loyalty. Even though there is a lot of violence and the characters get into illegal activities, the reader ends up feeling sorry for some of them. Mario Puzo writes in a way that transports you to Sicily, New York and gives you a mental picture of what the characters are like.… show more.

The Godfather is a favorite film of American audiences, but the book, unlike the film, raises serious questions about the integration of Italians into the American mainstream. A society within a society, the Italians embrace the gangster life initially as a way of survival and subsequently as a way of gaining wealth. From the first paragraph, Puzo calls attention to the Italians as outsiders, which makes the Don's question all the more important: Why didn't you come to me first (for help)? I find the novel rather philosophical, in an accessible way, when Michael argues that people behave not from… show more.

The Godfather, universally acknowledged to be the best novel dealing with the lives and struggles of an American organized crime family, is immensely readable. The main character, Don Corleone, vividly portrayed in the original Godfather film by Marlon Brando, is a living, breathing man who falls into a life of crime, eventually becoming capo of his own underworld family. Readers are presented with a riveting, honest, often ambivalent depiction of the American version of the Sicilian mafia, also referred to as Cosa Nostra. Each time I go back to The Godfather I am held in thrall by the fast-paced story, brilliant… show more.

I read The Godfather with a bunch of working class co-workers as we unloaded trucks at UPS. Published in 1971, the novel is a page turner, the bible for all gangster novels, and a theme that still works—immigrants come to America to make the dream happen. Though it was not looked on as literature at first, the characters who inhabit the novel are more potent than perhaps any other American novel. The movies and the following sequels are perfection. Highly recommended.  

The classic, quintessential Mafia novel – and with good reason. The first in a trilogy about Corleone crime family, it features a romanticized look at organized crime but is notable both for the sweeping scope of the story, as well as the fact that it introduced mainstream America to such now-familiar words as caporegime, Cosa Nostra, and omerta.

While not especially realistic compared to some works, I enjoyed that The Godfather is a crime fiction reader's power fantasy dream – there are only bad guys here, so there are no consequences for anything that happens to them.… show more.

When I was in high school, this was the first book I read by choice rather than "force". It was also the first book I ever really enjoyed reading. Being Italian American myself I found it telling a familiar story I could relate to in a way I wasn't expecting.