Puzo's Last best seller (Omerta - Mario Puzo)

Member Name: kiran8

Product:	Omerta - Mario Puzo
Date:	07/10/08 (175 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Racy and engrossing

Disadvantages: Glamourises crime

==About the Author Mario Puzo==

Mario Puzo's best selling novel The GodFather was preceded by two critically acclaimed novels The Dark Arena and The Fortunate Piligrim.

His other bestsellers include The Sicilian, The Fourth K,The Last Don.Mario Puzo also wrote many screenplays including Earthquake,Superman,and all three Godfather movies, for which he received two Academy Awards.
Apparently ,Mario Puzo spent the last three years of his life writing Omerta.
He died in July 1999 at his home in Long Island, New York at the age of Seventy Eight.

==About the Novel Omerta==

Omerta means a Sicilian code of conduct which forbids informing about crimes thought to be the affairs of the persons involved. The code was adopted by Sicilians long before the Mafia.

Omerta based on fear , was an extreme form of loyalty and solidarity in the face of authority.
Omerta born in Sicily and carried forward by the Mafia was becoming a relic from the bygone age having gone through a change.Honor may be silent but money talks was the general feeling.

It basically explores the consequences of a violation of the Sicilian 'code of silence' ( Omerta) chronicling the affairs of the Apriles, a family that has worked hard on legitimising a world of crime and corruption, with the FBI is trying to dig into all their past activities and wipe them out completely.

==The Story In Brief==

Don Zeno is ruthlessly murdered in Sicily.His infant son Astorre is
left in the care of Don Aprile living in New York.

In New York Don Aprile is running his empire with a fair but merciless hand. The Don, a widower ,brings up his four children including Astorre away from his world of crime and corruption, giving them good education and encouraging them to take up respectable professions.

Don Aprile comes to rely totally on his adopted son Astorre and
hopes that he would be the one to protect the family's honor when the time comes.He always fears that the past would catch up some day.

In the mean time Aprile has been slowly and steadily legitimising
his business , by selling off all the old shady business deals and concentrating on legitimate Banking and Macaroni importing.

Before Don Aprile could finish his work he is brutally murdered, by unknown assassins, and the rival Portella organisation tries to negotiate with the Don's children pressurising them to sell the banks , so that, they could launder the drug money with the help of these bought banks.

When Astorre resists, he becomes an open target for the criminals and, he takes shelter in Sicily with the Don's old friends trying to dodge various murder attempts..He is however determined to get to the truth and the identity of his own father Don Zeno and Don Aprile's killers.

Astorre is caught up in a web of crime and corruption that his adopted father had carefully kept him away from .. struggling to stay alive ,with only the initial training and knowledge that the Don had provided him when he was a teenager.

==My views about the novel==

This is a very interesting novel no doubt, but, it is not in the same class as 'The Godafather ' or even ' The Sicilian' for that matter.But at the same time it is definitely a novel that is well above the average and worth reading.

To keep up the continuity and connection there is a mention of the Corleones family of The Godfather.

There are so many Dons here , that i was thoroughly confused at the end of it.When i think back now , i still find it difficult making a connection between the different don families- this after having read the book twice.

Don Aprile comes across as a very emotional and humane person, which is actually not true, he being a ruthless Don.Here Mario Puzo writes about his bonding with his adopted son Astorre, and these passages show a softer and emotional side of the Don.
I love the way Puzo has described the hilly towns of Sicily , and the people with their simple lifestyles and traditions, getting innocently drawn into a world of corruption that leads to crime - one can read those passages any number of times.

There is a lot of violence, which is, i guess a necessary element in novels of this kind.But i hate the manner in which human life is totally disregarded and the meaningless killings taking place left right and centre -the killers going scot free - there is a lot of this in Mario Puzos books, he glamourises crime and makes it acceptable to a certain extent.I myself accept it as necessary while i get caught up in the book, but on second thoughts it seems so unnecessary.

Astorre, a respectable banker and business man , gets drawn into the crime and mafia scene .Here it is made to look as if he had no other way of dealing with it other than get involved and take help from the criminals.
One also wonders whether the Mafia is really as powerful and wide spread in its operations as Mario Puzo implies in his novels??

But with all that , this is a very well written novel that keeps one engrossed throughout..

Summary: Very well written and Worth reading