Tom Hagen, the counsigliori, looked at the Godfather, "He says he will sue us for threatening him."The Godfather, Vito Corleone, radiating an usual aura, said, "I will give him an offer he will not resist. But if he refuses, I will reason with him."
The Godfather is one of the great novels of the twentieth century and constitutes the defining story of organized crime in America. Oh, other novels have and will be written on this subject, some of them very good indeed. But The Godfather stands alone, far above all others of the genre. This is a classic and great novel. Seven stars at least.
This is the story of Don Vito Corleone, whose Sicilian father (family name of Andolini) is murdered by the local Mafia Don in Corleone, Sicily. Relatives spirit young Vito away to America, for otherwise he too will be murdered to prevent the otherwise certain day when he will come for revenge. Vito comes to America and builds an empire of organized crime.
The triumph of this novel is that it explains the Mafia as the Mafia sees itself. As Vito’s son Michael explains, Vito (known to friends and associates as The Godfather, a traditional term of respect) sees himself as the equal of presidents, senators, and governors of the states, and sees no reason to be "a fool" or to accept the rules of society that condemn others to (what he perceives as) lives of failure and subordination. Accordingly, Don Corleone rejects the rules of society, the fact that governments restrict the use of violence to themselves, and builds his own society--La Cosa Nostra ("our world"). Within the narrow limits of this world he is more powerful than the government.
The book can be criticized for somewhat glorifying the underworld, but in reality by the time the reader completes the novel the corruption, violence, and destructiveness of organized crime are depressingly obvious.
The other amazing thing about this novel is Puzo’s ability to tell an extraordinarily complex story involving many characters in a coherent fashion that never loses the reader with too much detail. By the time I finished the novel I felt that I knew Tom Hagan, Michael and Sonny Corleone, the Don himself, Johnnie Fontane, and a whole host of other characters. Most novels founder in confusion when they try to present so many characters and so many interconnected sub-plots. Not here. Puzo tells his story with superb prose and flawless coherence. From a craftsmanship standpoint, this is precisely the type of novel that all novelists aspire to write. Few succeed. Puzo succeeds brilliantly.
Before reading this novel I had never understood the role of the Mafia in American (or Sicilian!) society, and how complicity by the authorities is what really allow it to function. Puzo did understand these things, and the novel explains with insight and clarity.
This novel stands head-and-shoulders above most other American novels of the Twentieth Century, and is the defining novel about organized crime in America.