The Godfather
Mario Puzo, 1969
★ 4.40 from 481.8k ratings on Goodreads
A family saga about favors, loyalty and the cost of being owed—still the blueprint for every crime epic. The prose moves at a deliberate, old-fashioned pace, steeped in family loyalty, dread and a quiet, almost gothic seriousness.
Feels like dread, awe and longing. About morality, family and memory.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy patient family sagas and morally tangled crime stories with a large cast. Be warned that the pacing can drag, and some sexual passages and gender attitudes feel dated.
Why read it
It offers a clear-eyed look at favors, obligation and family loyalty, and the undertaker's opening speech shows how Puzo turns ordinary American ambition into something uneasy.
A page from the book
What a father says when he has stopped believing in America.
The undertaker closed his eyes for a moment and then began to speak. His voice was quiet, the voice he used to console the bereaved. “I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I believe in America. America has made my fortune. I gave my daughter her freedom and yet taught her never to dishonor her family. She found a ‘boy friend,’ not an Italian. She went to the movies with him. She stayed out late. But he never came to meet her parents. I accepted all this without a protest, the fault is mine. Two months ago he took her for a drive. He had a masculine friend with him. They made her drink whiskey and then they tried to take advantage of her. She resisted. She kept her honor. They beat her. Like an animal. When I went to the hospital she had two black eyes. What readers say
Readers are often gripped and admiring, praising the characters, suspense, and family/crime saga; many also find the pacing slow and the gender politics or sexual passages off-putting. Opinions split on whether the novel matches the film.
Mario Puzo.Puzo wrote The Godfather while in debt and later said he wrote it to make money; it became one of the best-selling novels of the 1970s.
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Godfather for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy patient family sagas and morally tangled crime stories with a large cast. Be warned that the pacing can drag, and some sexual passages and gender attitudes feel dated.
- What is The Godfather like?
- The prose moves at a deliberate, old-fashioned pace, steeped in family loyalty, dread and a quiet, almost gothic seriousness. Feels like dread, awe and longing. About morality, family and memory.
- What should I read after The Godfather?
- If you liked The Godfather, try The Shining (Stephen King), Red Dragon (Thomas Harris) and The Matarese Circle (Robert Ludlum).
A taste of the feed
What makes a place a home is who you come back to.
Graham returned to the table. He was afraid that this was how he would remember the end of Sugarloaf Key-ice melting in two tea glasses and paper napkins fluttering off the redwood table in the breeze and Molly and Willy far down the beach.
Red Dragon · Thomas Harris
The invisible knot that ties gratitude to obedience.
But the major would never offer the slightest objection about anything where the general was concerned. “Mad Anthony” Blackburn had carried a broken young lieutenant out of a North Vietnamese prison camp, away from torture and starvation, and brought him through the jungles back to American lines. That was years ago; the lieutenant was a major now, the senior aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Matarese Circle · Robert Ludlum
A stranger’s grip can feel like a message you haven’t learned to read.
Someone touches my hand and wrist, fingers encircling me so unexpectedly that I jerk away, then stop myself, so as not to cause a scene. The grip is cold and bony and trembling, but surprisingly strong. I turn to see the woman from the garden. She straightens her humped back and gazes up at me through eyes the color of the hydrangeas back home at Drayden Hill—a soft, clear blue with a lighter mist around the edges. Her pleated lips tremble.
Before We Were Yours · Lisa Wingate
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