The Godfather

Image credit: Amazon.in

This week on the couch, I took a walk on the wild side in with an Italian-American family living in post-War America and playing by their own rules. That’s right, I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse and knuckled down to read The Godfather.

Mario Puzo’s classic gangster tale tells the story of the Corleone Family, a group of mafia living peacefully in New York until they are thrust into war with the other mafia Families when an assassination attempt is made on Don Vito Corleone’s (a.k.a. the Godfather’s) life. While he’s recovering from his injuries, the Family Business suffers and an all-out war ensues between the ruling mafia Families of New York, putting the Don and his sons in very real danger, both of death and of meeting their destinies.

I truly was not expecting to like The Godfather. I have seen the movies, liked them but can’t really remember much of what happens in them, and have come to the conclusion that, while the gangster genre is fun and full of intrigue, it’s not really my thing. However, I might need to rethink my stance on the genre when looking at it from a literary perspective.

Mario Puzo does this amazing job of creating the most incredible villain. Despite the fact that he has no respect for official structures of authority, women, and most of his fellow man, Vito Corleone is a man that you’re gunning for from page one. There’s this fantastic reflective symmetry in the way that Puzo describes his character as having immaculate charm and authority to gain the trust and respect of the inhabitants of the novel, and this works just as well on the reader, creating this dangerous attachment to a truly villainous man.

Image credit: Costa Nostra News

Alongside enveloping the reader in this intricate world where no one trusts one another (not even within blood families), Puzo does this remarkable job of completely perverting and subverting social ideals of right and wrong, moral and immoral, good and bad. By bringing the criminal syndicate into the spotlight, The Godfather poses so many questions about the nature of social attitudes, immigrant culture, and it then explores the effects of those questions in a sinister and, sometimes gory, way. The entire thing is marvellous!

The Godfather is a truly surprising book. With its crisp and accessible prose that makes intricate and complex plotlines readable, as well as its uncanny ability to make us gun for the bad guys, it’s one of those rare books that satisfies its readers with that feeling of being proven wrong by an incredibly smart person: there’s no shame or bitterness at liking this book even if ‘gangster’ is not your thing.

Author: Mario Puza

First published in Great Britain in1969 by William Heinemann Ltd.