The GODFATHER / FORTUNATE PILGRIM

by Mario Puzo

The story of Don Vito Corleone, the head of a New York Mafia family, inspired some of the most successful movies ever. It is in Mario Puzo's The Godfather that Corleone first appears. As Corleone's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0099279320
• ISBN13: 9780099279327
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: Random House UK Ltd (A Division of Random House Group)
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A great pair of books

This volume contains two of Puzo's works. I think the first deserves 4.5 stars and the second 3 stars so overall it's about 4.Noone hasn't heard of The Godfather. Almost everyone has seen it. The movies (I and II) have been acclaimed as some of the greatest films of all time. The Godfather in novel form more than lives up to the expectations that in most adaptations the book is better than the movie. The story follows the rise of Michael Corleone as the Don of his mafia family. Michael is an unlikely Don who starts off as a college-graduate and war-hero who is ashamed of his family's illegal ties. But then circumstances changed...The book has one better on what the movie has been accused of - gratuitous length. Godfather I and II are both very long and the attention to detail detracts from the attention spans of the more impatient viewers. But a novel is expected to be long and detailed - in fact it's not too long by literary standards.The book covers Godfather I and parts from II which talk about Vito Corleone's beginnings as an Italian immigrant. It also has many plotlines that aren't in the movies. The greatness of the book is that it creates a whole world of emotion - with the loyalty, betrayals and murders. The book ties in subtle parts of the plot together making you see things that watching the movie aren't at all obvious (like the intentions of certain characters and the motivations for their behaviour). If you liked the Godfather movies at all or are interested in the workings of an Italian crime family at it's grandest, this book is gold.The Fortunate Pilgrim is more of a drama. It tells the story of Lucia Santa - an immigrant widow living in a small appartment in New York and raising her children. This book exposes the reality of the life of immigrant Italians in all it's harshness, with the very tight budgets and subsistent living, domestic violence, a clash between the traditional Italian values and modern American ones, the generation gap and the temptation of crime.This is characterized in Lucia's children. The daughter is an assertive, educated type determined to become big in the real world. One of the sons is a womaniser and all-round good guy. The other sons are archetypes of kids growing up during the depression. A moving, though at times slow book.If you want to see and enjoy the different sides of Puzo as a writer, this novel is ideal.