The first two Godfather films are considered two of the greatest films of all time. I can't say the same of the novel. It's not Great Literature (tm) on a par with novels of Austen or Hugo, but it's not quite a trashy Jacqueline Susann read either. Although like Susann's Valley of the Dolls and many a tawdry bestseller, it has the quality of a roman-a-clef with part of the fascination being you feel you're reading a thinly disguised tale of people such as Frank Sinatra. Yet despite the first "Book" of around 190 pages being very true to the films I'd seen several times, I found that part completely absorbing, with so much that has become iconic ("making his bones," "going to the mattresses," "sleeping with the fishes.")
The raw material out of which were created the mafia legend are right in the book. I'm not sure how accurate is the portrait of organized crime. I have heard that those in organized crime themselves adopted The Godfather, liked to think of themselves in its light. That suggests the book glamorizes organized crime. It certainly paints both Don Corleone and his heir Michael, if not as heroes, then as very shrewd men with leadership qualities and touches of genius. It's telling that the book takes as its epigraph a quotation of Balzac, "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime." This is at heart a very cynical book that sees little difference between the political power as wielded by statesmen, the economic power of entrepreneurs and the brute force of criminals. The book and the films wink at us and tell us we're naive to think there is any difference. One phrase you hear over and over in the book as people are betrayed. “Nothing personal, just business.” The words signaling the most chilling of responses is "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse." I don't think Puzo paints the mafia men as honorable, and Michael calls the mafia a "cancer" on Sicily. To see the book as glorifying the mob is to miss a lot of the book's irony and anti-capitalist theme.
In the first third of the novel I was completely sucked in. I thought Godfather, if no great work of literature, might still count as a minor classic, such as The Scarlet Pimpernel or The Hounds of the Baskervilles still being read and enjoyed over a century after publication. However, the book proved very uneven. There's this entire subplot taking up major portions of the book involving the Frank Sinatra-like character, Johnny Fontaine, I thought a pointless distraction. The portion involving Vito Corleone, the "Godfather 2" material, felt too tell, not show in the book, and was better realized in the second film. I didn't feel that parts not found in the films enriched it as much as they diluted the central story about Michael Corleone, and I thought the first two Godfather films were better structured than the book. Nor does the book really give you enough of a look at Michael's inner life so you gain insight into how he changed beyond the bare events of the novel and film. The film also excises a lot in the book that is just plain crass. Film director Coppola is simply a better storyteller in his medium than author Puzo. I don't think you gain anything from reading the book--the first two films are far richer.
