Guerre du Vietnam

VETEAU Stéphanie                                                                                                                                                                713                          

The book that I recently read is the novel The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo which was first published in the year 1965. The novelist Mario Puzo is well-known for his famous mafia book The Godfather and was critically acclaimed for his book The Fortunate Pilgrim. Puzo had adopted the story of this novel based on his mother's immigration struggling for respectability in the United States and himself considered this novel to be his finest though Godfather earned him much more fame and earning.

The Fortunate Pilgrim is the real birthplace of The Godfather. It is about the Angeluzzi-Corbos family, an Italian immigrant family follows through the Depression up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. In fact, it addresses the themes the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family living in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, home to the poor and working-class Italian and Irish American immigrants. The language is crude and life is tough; you are happy if you simply survive. The mother, Lucia Santa who is also the main character, does survive. She has two husbands and six children but there are three deaths. By the book's end you know the six children. I particularly liked how the personalities of the six children were so different. You follow them to adulthood and, by the novel’s end, I even felt empathy for the mother too. She was such a strong, determined woman that it wasn't until the end that I felt she needed my sympathy. The life of this family felt genuine through and through, and moments of sunlight are shown too. However, you cannot read a book about Italians that skirts the issue of the Mafia. Why is it so hard not to fall into the trap of the Mafia? One of the sons succumbs. Why? How? You understand because you understand the life of the mother and her six kids and that help was not available from legal venues.

For me, the story, places and the characters became so real that the readers can't stop wondering about them and help them understand the climax during this period. The novelist has been brilliantly able to tell a known story in a known tone that makes us feel them in our lives and that's why the characters and stories got the power keep a reader awake whole night. Mario Puzo has shown literacy excellence in this story.  The love and respect Puzo has for the mother comes through clearly, and he said that her protective instincts became part of the model for Don Corleone in The Godfather.

I really liked this novel and finished it within 3 days. I have always been a great admirer of Puzo's writing and this one was a really different book than his famous mafia books. This is a book that touches the reader's mind. The story and the storytelling ability were so attractive that I had a very hard time putting the book down. Whenever I could I read the book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found this novel very inspiring: what's more beautiful than a book that is so personal, so wistful, so poetic, where Puzo is most vulnerable showing this gentle side of himself, where he dared to imbibe hope in such an unabashed fashion.

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