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The depression which Freddo suffered following his father's shooting also provided excellent insight into the guilt that besieged him following his poor guarding of his father. The depth of characters in the book was far greater. I am so glad that I took the time to read the book, despite seeing the film many times. There is so much more to the book I haven't even mentioned. Sonny's mistress Lucy had a more purposeful ongoing role in the book, as in the film her character was just a fling of passion. This was also the case with Michael's first wife, in the book she is pregnant at the time of her death, which is not clearly conveyed in the film. Give yourself a treat and read the book.Nicholas R.W. Henning - Australian Author
A great story is a great story regardless of who does or doesn't like it. On one level I almost don't want to like this book because it has become a part of and spawned so much in mainstream American pop culture, mainly due to the movie, which was great, and all the mafia story spinoffs/rip offs it inspired in films/television, which were a mixed bag. In spite of that I have to consider this book a classic. Puzo seems to have done a lot of real world research putting this together from what I understand and really gets in the characters heads and world. Its one of those books that you really get immersed in and have trouble putting it down.
I think my review is biased by the greatness of the movie. in truth, Puzo isn't the most deft writer in history. But fans of the films will love the richer back story and additional characters that flesh out the broader tale of the Corleone family.
Excellent book. I like the ending in the book best. I really like how you get what the characters motivations are - which isn't always noticeable in the movie. The side story about Luca.more about Sonny and the bridesmaid.how Fabrizzio got it.etc.
Others are more like little continuity errors; for example, in the book Michael and Kay's children are both boys, in the movie they are a boy and a girl, in the book you Vito was an only child, in the movie he had an older brother who had been murdered in a Mafia vendetta. I'm usually not a fan of reading books based on movies I've already seen, especially ones that I've seen enough times that the images from the movie are indelibly etched in the brain. There are several others, of course, including the fact that some of the movies most famous lines don't appear in the book at all.On the whole, though, Puzo does a fabulous job of letting us into the world of the Corleone family and, while some have accused the films of romanticizing organized crime, a bogus charge in my opinion, you certainly can't accuse the books of doing that. It's for that reason that, even though I've seen The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II , and, yes, even The Godfather, Part III , I was reluctant to actually sit down and read Mario Puzo's 1969 novel which started the whole saga, partly because I thought it would disappoint me, and partly because I thought that my near-photographic memory of the movies would in some sense ruin the book which was, of course, written well before Brando, Pacino, Duvall, and Caan ever picked up a script.Boy, was I wrong.While it's impossible to read about any member of the Corleone family without seeing the actors that portrayed them, or to read through the chapters about, say, the Connie Corleone wedding scene, without remembering how it was portrayed in the movie, that really doesn't detract at all from the experience of reading what turned out to be a very good book.For the true Godfather fan, of course, the interesting thing to note are the differences between the book and the movies (plural because there are elements of the novel that show up in both The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II ). Some of them are understandable, such as the amount of time that Puzo takes up telling the back stories of characters such as Bonasera the undertaker and Johnny Fontane, because they would have made the movie much longer and more difficult to make. Yes, Vito Corleone comes across as something of a noble figure who believes he's only doing what he needs to do to project his family, but the lie behind that becomes apparently pretty quickly and, when his youngest son takes his place, it becomes blatant.Even if you're not a fan of the movies, this is a great read. If you are a fan, it's an essential one.
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