THIS TOPIC WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS

THIS TOPIC WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS

For anyone that has started reading the book and would like to discuss it here under this topic, PLEASE start EACH of your posts, UNDERLINED and in BOLD with the Chapter Number and the word SPOILERS at the very top of EACH Post.

Example : CHAPTER ONE DISCUSSION SPOILERS

This way if someone is not up to a part of the book that you are up to, they will be forwarned that what they are about to read is NOT a part of the book that they are up to yet.

You may be 5 chapters into the book and want to discuss and post about something in chapter 5, but I may only be up to chapter 3 and therefore wouldn't want to read what you are discussing about chapter 5. So that is why I suggest that EACH post starts out, at the very top, with the chapter number underlined and in bold.


Don Cardi

Did you get your book DC? There was trouble with my order so I won't get mine till sometime next week

CHAPTER ONE & CHAPTER TWO SPOILERS


Well, it's very obvious that Winegardner took the Carlos Marcello and the Kennedy brothers stories and just changed their names. Carlos Tramonti ( Carlos Marcello). The Shea Brothers
(The Kennedy Brothers).

I found that so far, through a preface and two chapters, this book is already more interesting than The Godfather Returns.

I find it more interesting that Winegardner has taken real life mob history, real life political history and incorporated it into a story involving The Corleones.

There are several things said by Winegardner about some of the original GF characters that tells me that he's surfed our GF Trilogy thread and 'borrowed' some of the things that we've pointed out or specualted about the GF characters.

It also looks to me as though the story of Michael, helping to get James Shea ( John Kennedy) elected President, is based on the real life story of Sam Giancana intervening on behalf of Frank Sinatra, to pull the union votes to Kennedy.

This book may actually be better than the last one in the sense that a lot of what has taken place so far is based on real life happenings between the mob, the government and the connection between the CIA and the Mob in attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Two chapters. So far so good.



Don Cardi

Like what?

CHAPTER ONE & CHAPTER TWO SPOILERS




It wasn't really that much stuff Mig. A line or two here and there in The Prologue. so I don't want to make it appear as though he did this alot. It's really no big deal and I probably shouldn't have even mentioned it.

It's hard to explain in words Mig. You have to read it to understand what I mean. Some of the lines he uses about Michael and Tom's relationship, about Michael breaking Tom's balls about loyalty, are very very similar to things that we've discussed on the boards many times. Points that I remember Turnbull bringing up about why Michael treated Tom like shit at times.

I just get the feeling that he's read our discussions about things like this because what he writes resonates views that only a gangsterbb fanatic would talk about.

Besides, why in the world are you reading these posts when you haven't even started reading the book? You're going to ruin it for yourself.


Don Cardi

I guess I'm going to have to give in and read it.

What's wrong with a sneak peak?

I got my book in today. Can't wait to start discussing it.

Now get crackin!



Don Cardi

Tom Hagen is hands down my favorite character from both the novel and the saga, so when I heard that the new book was going to give him a lot of time in the limelight I was very happy (inspite of the terrible reception Returns recieved. I've yet to read that myself).

I won't be able to get my hands on Revenge for a minute yet so I was wondering if anyone could field any spoilers regarding the character. Pretty please? Anyone? I wouldn't forget the favor

SPIOLERS UP TO CHAPTER 9


Well early in the book Winegardner dedicates a whole chapter to Hagen and his wife. But you'll have to read it to find out


This book returns to the Nick Gerace character, and the chapter given to Gerace is an interesting one, making the Gerace character much more interesting than in the last book.

He also spends a chapter on Johnny Fontane which, to my surprise, was not as boring as I thought it was going to be. I'll put it this way, if ever anyone had any doubt that the Johnny Fontane character was based on Frank Sinatra, after reading this chapter all doubts will be erased. Winegardner lightly touches on Fontanes life in the sixties which mirrors many of the things that Sinatra went through up until those years of his life.

I also enjoyed the chapter (8 I believe) which introduces a Corleone caporegime named Eddie Paradise (pronounced Paradee-see). An interesting character who could be right out of the streets of any tough neighborhood that is run by gansgters. He runs the Redhook section of Brooklyn along with his right hand man Momo The Roach. Winegardner is cute in that he makes several little inuendos in this chapter covering Eddie Paradise, which mirror some of the real life doings of The Gallo clan who used to run Redhook in real life. While we all know that The Rosatto Brothers from GFII were based on the real life Gallo brothers, Winegardner makes a reference about this Eddie character having a cage from a Zoo in the basement of his club and his wanting to put a pet Lion in that cage. In real life the Gallo brothers had a pet lion in the basement of their club in Redhook.

So far, it looks as though Winegardner did his homework as far as real life mobsters and polticians go and has creatively applied some of those real life happenings to his charaters in the book.

I have to say that I am enjoying this book much more than I expected. And definitely much more than The Godfather Returns. Not a literary genius by any means, but enjoyable.

EDIT : Did I mention about Johnny Fontane being the Grand Marshall of the Columbus Day Parade, accompanied by his oldest daughter? And how Winegardner keeps referencing about her new Black knee high Boots? Ring a bell anyone? ( "These boots are made for walking," recorded in real life by none other than the chairman of the board's daughter--Nancy Sinatra)


Don Cardi

Ok I'm crackin

Don Cardi you are a terrible tease

SPOILERS UP TO CHAPTER 14, End of BOOK I



So both Sonny's daughter and aunt Connie have the hots for Johnny Fontaine. The weakest chapter in the book so far. One that I could have done without. But I guess that a writer needs to insert dull and sensless chapters like this one in order to fill up his book.

A commission meeting held in Brooklyn, run by Michael Corleone. Now this is what I want to read about, not Connie's hots for Johnny Fontaine.

Don Altobello has just become a member of the commission and is the Don of the Tattaglia family. The Cuneos have become a close ally to the Corleones, and they were the ones responsible for finding and taking out Fabrizzio on Michael's behalf, years before. (obviously why I posted the question that I did over in the GF Novel thread).

The book continues to parallel real life mob and political happenings. There is reference made to a farm in upstate New York where a raid had taken place years earlier, netting the heads of many mafia families from around the country. An obvious referal to the real life infamous Appalachian meeting.

There is also a proposal made at that commission meeting to kill the President of the United States in order to put a stop to his younger brother's continued efforts, as attorney general, to crackdown on the mob. That proposal comes from the Don of New Orleans.

These two brothers, the President and the Attorney General, have one weekness though, and Micheal Corleone knows exactly what that weekness is, due to their hanging out with Johnny Fontaine; infidelity with woman.

Sound like any historical pair of political brothers that we know of who were known to have hung around with a famous italian singer?

Hopefully things will get a bit more exciting in Book II and start to take place after Winegardner spending 14 chapters developing the plot.

Not a bad read so far, but not as action packed as I thought it was going to be.





Don Cardi

I'm not even done with chapter 2 yet. I still have the mind set that it is going to suck like Returns did so I am having trouble reading it.

SPOILERS **** SPOILERS **** SPOILERS ****



OK people, back after about a year off (??) but I just happened to be doing some very early shopping at the local bigbox, and picked up a copy of "Revenge" at a big discount.

So I tore through it yesterday, speed-skimming it, and I must say I have very, very mixed feelings so far.

First, the book seemed overly fixed on resolving the Nick Gerace storylne from "Returns." Frankly as much as anything it seemed more like a book about Nick Gerace than the Corleones.

That ticked me off, because while overall I liked "Returns" OK -- didn't love it, but didn't vehemently hate it as much as many here or other reviewers seemed to -- to me, the main challenge to any writer basing a new work on the Corleone Saga HAS to be how to advance and integrate the unresolved storylines of the characters already established in the canonical works, to come up with plausible plotlines which would fit in the existing continuity.

By far, the biggest unresolved storyline from "The Godfather, Part II" (and, by omission, the failure of "Part III") was the issue of Tom Hagen's loyalty to Michael Corleone. Toward the end of Part II, that loyalty was starting to fray a bit around the edges. It was clearly being foreshadowed by Puzo and FFC toward the end of Part II that Hagen's loyalty might not be as unconditional as it had appeared to be, and both Michael and Tom had reasons to question how loyal he would ultimately be.

So to me, the demise of Hagen in "Revenge" was a HUGE disappointment -- a fundamental core character in the Puzo/FFC continuity was written out simply as a plot device to advance the adventures of Nick Gerace (who frankly I did not personally give a $#$# about, since he was not an established character in the canon). Hagen's death, in mid-1964, also comes too soon to match up with the continuity established in "Part III" -- Hagen is dead in Part III, but the implication I always got from watching the movie is that his death had been somewhat recent, not last week, but not 16 years ago as the "Revenge" storyline now places it.

There were a few other things, I can't recount in detail, that "Revenge" seemed to just totally ignore "Part III" as canon, perhaps just pretending that it hadn't happened.

The storylines of the Corleone children were also jumbled up. We didn't really see what happened to Sonny's older sons (who were toddlers in Part I, visited Vito's bedside, etc etc.) It has been presumed they moved away with Sandra, and did not pursue life in "the family," but there's still a question if Sonny's legitimate sons would want to get involved with the family as his illegitimate son Vincent does in Part III.

I will have to read it over and let it soak in. Some parts were OK, but again I felt it dwelled way too much on what happened with Nick Gerace and not enough on the Corleone Family.

The NY Times Book Review panned this book.

November 19, 2006
The Consigliere
By MICHAEL AGGER

THE GODFATHER’S REVENGE
By Mark Winegardner.

Say what you will about the Mafia, it’s an organization that knows how to elegantly dispose of a corpse. Mark Winegardner, not a Sicilian but an English professor, has written two sequels to Mario Puzo’s “Godfather.” The first was a jumble of Cuba scenes, betrayal and Michael Corleone’s eternal desire to become a legitimate businessman. It’s memorable mostly for angering readers with its “gay Fredo” revelation (an entirely plausible deduction from the movies). Now, with “The Godfather’s Revenge,” a once-amusing idea is starting to assume a necrophiliac air. For how many more pages can Michael, Kay, Tom and Johnny Fontane keep this stuff up? And don’t they ever get to leave the ’60s behind?

Winegardner sets his new novel determinedly in that era, when the Kennedys, the Mafia and Frank Sinatra burned brightly in the American imagination — a safe and unsatisfying decision. In the wake of “The Sopranos” and “The Wire,” the book feels like a visit to a Mafia version of Colonial Williamsburg: watch the women make manicotti, while the men plot and sulk in the dark.

Recreating Puzo’s embroidered Mafia universe can be entertaining, and Winegardner has rich (in every sense of the word) material to work with. Name another movie that half the world can quote ... besides “Star Wars” and “Casablanca” and “The Wizard of Oz.” Despite this inherited advantage, Winegardner writes like a low-level soldier who never fails to mention his connections to the more powerful. “The Godfather’s Revenge” cruises through a few scenes of double-dealing and then invariably drops some thundering reference to scenes mostly remembered from the Francis Ford Coppola movies. When Johnny Fontane and Francesca Corleone stroll in the moonlight, for instance, they end up flirting on top of the grave of Khartoum, the racehorse whose head showed up in “The Godfather.” This made me want to put down the book and go watch the original scene on YouTube.

“The Godfather’s Revenge” takes an extended journey into the mind of Tom Hagen, the Corleone consigliere, and continues the original story of Nick Geraci, a traitorous Corleone underboss determined to push aside Michael and take his job. Nick is somewhat unbelievable. He’s a wiseguy in search of a Renaissance Weekend — give this man a pay phone and he will orchestrate a few hits and then go home and work on his memoir while struggling with his Parkinson’s and keeping trim as a boxer and hiding from his mortal enemies. Tom merely gets into trouble with his wife after his mistress turns up dead. The novel also features cameos from the athletic, philandering Shea brothers, who are Winegardner’s stand-ins for Jack and Bobby.

The stories of these tradition-bound men are told with economy and a pulpy flair. There’s just one problem: these men are not Michael, who makes only shadowy and inconclusive appearances in the book. That’s an astounding choice. Why drive a Fiat when you have a Ferrari in the garage? Michael is a character who moves between good and evil, who killed his own brother, who longs for legitimacy and power. He’s a successful Hamlet, one who can dress well and act when pushed.

The great attraction of Puzo’s and Coppola’s “Godfather” was the romantic notion that a criminal code of honor, based on family, could persist in the modern era. When Winegardner delves into how all the world is like a Mafia, his book feels right, as in the scene with Michael envying the set-up of Robert Moses, who collects kickbacks from the public works he oversees, yet is hailed as a civic hero. Too often, though, the book just wants to rub shoulders with every historical moment it can, including the ultimate: the Kennedy assassination. Sure, the Corleones can be a hidden hand in history, but their power was always balanced by and rooted in a ritualistic family life. This is where Winegardner fails to innovate, and his confection falls flat. After all, a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.

Just idly wondering here: I wonder if Winegarden was under some kind of contractual restriction from Paramount, or FFC, or the Puzo estate, or whomever actually controls copyright on the character, as to how much he could involve Michael Corleone in the plotline.

Both books ("Returns" and "Revenge") dwell conspicuously on subplots involving secondary characters (Fredo in "Returns," Tom Hagen in "Revenge,") and BOTH deal quite extensively with the new character, Nick Gerace, created by Winegarten strictly for the books -- while leaving Michael Corleone almost a peripheral character in the storyline in both books.

That statement is right on the money. Historical moments and parallels work well at the appropriate times, but it's now at a point of overkill. Not to mention that I am halfway through the book and so far, not even a mob hit, halfway through the book and no action whatsoever.

What started out as a pretty good foundation for a decent story has now become somewhat boring.

It's now begining to look as though Winegardner has once again dropped the ball.



Don Cardi

You had doubts that he wouldn't??

I think your brain has gone soft from all that comedy you play.

I thought that I would give him the benefit of the doubt. Figured that after reading our reviews of his first book, here on the boards, he would at least try to get it right the second time. In all fairness I have to finish the book before becoming a critic.




Don Cardi

You're probably right. I should START the book before I criticize him.

This is worse than Michael getting wood in the movie theater.

I'm on a roll now I'm up to ch.3

Now the book is getting interesting again. But it still lacks the real in your face mob stuff.



Don Cardi

From the reviews that I have read {since I have not started "Revenge" yet} the book is low on action, but it picks up at the end {in terms of mob hits}.

I wouldn't say that Hagen and Fredo are secondary characters, those are more like Rocco and Neri.

SPOILERS ** SPOILERS UP To CHAPTER 18

It's becoming very difficult to finish this book. One chapter seems to pull you in, and then the next two suck.

I mean this guy spends half the chapter on a meeting between a lawyer and Michael. While it pertains to the story, he drags out a conversation between them, most of it meaningless. He spends almost 20 pages with this Sid Klien character, where he maybe only needed to spend about 5.

Early in the book Winegardner develops what looked to be an interesting storyline interwoven with some interesting characters. But almost 19 chapters later those characters have not developed into anything important in regards to the storyline.

Case in point, Carlo Tramonti. Very good writing about this character in the begining of the book. Outside of the commission meeting, halfway through the book, never talked about again. Eddie Paradise was another character talked about at the begining of the book. A character that looked as though he had the potential to develop into an intersting character in a mafia book. Winegardner, so far, fails to accomplish that.

As I was about to begin reading chapter 18, until I saw that it starts out with

"Francesca Corleone Van Arsdale - shrouded with dread, as she was all the time now..."

Who gives a fock about Francesca Corleone and her dread? This is supposed to be a book about one of the greatest fictional mob families in literary and cinematic history! A mafia book! Michael is almost non existant in this book! And when Michael does appear in a chapter, Winegardner really fails to capture the personality of Michael as we know him through Puzo. It's as though Winegardner wants to create his own characters, which is fine in itself, but has used the Corleone character name to advance his own, stupid, one dimensional characters. He could have surrounded his boring characters with Joe Shmo, and it wouldn't have made a difference.

You know how when reading a good book, you can't wait to find out what happens next but at the same time don't really want the book to end because it is so good?

Well with Godfather's Revenge, you are afraid to find out what junk is going to happen next, and at the same time you just cannot wait for the book to end because it's so bad.

I hope that Winegardner reads this thread because if he is, I want hom to know that he sucks with these Godfather books.

How the hell Puzo and his estate allowed this guy to destroy such great characters as the Corleone characters is beyond me.

Winegardner's books make Godfather III look like it should have won the Academy Award for best picture of the year.

Do I have to finish this book? It's becoming a chore.

Winegardner, you come out with another book, I will buy it, but I won't read it. I'll use it as toilet paper instead .



Seems to me that Winegardner has duped us again.



Don Cardi

But DC, how do you really feel?

PS, thanks for saving me $17 and a few hours of my life.