The Godfather Returns

The Godfather Returns is written by Mark Winegardner, a professor in the creative writing program at Florida State University. The Novel was published in November 16, 2004 by Ballantine Books (an imprint of Random House Publishing Groups), New York. The novel is divided into 32 chapters and composed of 538 pages, in addition, based on the timeline of the story, the novel is divided into nine "books". The novel is intended to fill the missing years in Mario Puzo's The Godfather. It covers the years between The Godfather part 1 and part 2 and several years between part 2 and part 3. As a gap-filler novel, Winegardner has to follow the theme, the plot, the characters and any things in his novel with Puzo’s, and indeed he has done a great job. Winegardner brings all the characters in Puzo’s alive as Puzo did in the original novel, even Winegardner can expand his own characters and bring them alive such as Fredo and Francesca Corleone. His characters, besides helping cement the story-foundation, it also shows Winegardner’s characteristic in writing. The story itself is giving more details of Michael Corleone’s plan in achieving his goal that is to be legit in business. Started when Mike gives Geraci a test of loyalty, Mike’s journey to his goal always attached with surprises. A word of wisdom says “nothing is perfect”, and the same happens in Mike’s plan, it is changing time to time and he has to fix it immediately or the destruction to his plan is in front of his face. Though he has inherited a brilliant mind and good speculator from his father, he can not avoid the fact that he has to lose his brother Fredo and his wife Kay on his way. The readers might have expected, from the title of the novel, an ending where Michael will replace his father’s position as the godfather, and at last in the end of the story, the expectation is fully paid. The novel ends with Mike receive the honor from four other Don of the New York crime families to be the new godfather. Besides some loses, this novel ends with glorious achievements, first is that Mike successfully brings his family business into legitimacy, second, he is given the honor to be the new godfather. The third glorious end is that he can start again to re-unite his family in one place as his father did. (recommended book)