I thought this book was fantastic. I can see why it is a classic and was made into such a successful movie. The book portrayed the underworld of the 1950s with great detail and an eye for the subtle intricacies that govern personal relationships. The storyline was interesting and it moved through a long period of time without creating too much confusion, something that most novels cannot accomplish. I especially enjoyed the chapters relating to Don Vito Corleone, Michael, Sonny, and Johnny Fontane, but the other characters and their chapters were entertaining as well.
The only problem I had was the occasional divergences in the plot that talked about the lives of less important characters. Towards the end of the book, Puzo did seem to wander off topic a bit and write about some events that were not central to the plot, like Lucy Mancini’s surgery or Nino Valenti’s suicidal drinking. I suppose these may come into play in the next book, or maybe Puzo felt they were necessary to set up Michael’s ascent to head of the family; however as a reader I felt that these chapters were a little unnecessary and distracted from the main storyline of the mafia war.
I am most definitely reading the second book on my own time when I get the chance, as well as watching the movies. It will be interesting to see how Puzo continues his plot; the end of this book seemed pretty final, with Michael moving the family out to the relatively mellow setting of Los Vegas. I would also be interested to see how the director of the film was able to portray all the vivid scenes from the book, and to see how the actual movie matched up with the extraordinary images that Puzo’s story created. Reading this classic novel was quite entertaining, and I thoroughly enjoyed Puzo’s in depth description of the Italian mafia.
I feel in alignment with you in my feeling regarding the massive divergences from the plot in the wandering and seemingly irrelevant tales of secondary characters that took up mass portions of the novel. As a rather lengthy work weighing in at well over 400 pages, I feel this might put off some readers that may have been more inclined to read the book had it been shorter. This decrease in length could be achieved with the elimination of those sub plots, as you had suggested.
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