FSU Creative Writing Professor Mark Winegardner has drawn top reviews for "The Godfather's Revenge," his second sequel to Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" novels.
The highly anticipated "The Godfather's Revenge" hit shelves last November. Winegardner's earlier saga, "The Godfather Returns," became an instant best-seller after its release in fall 2004 and made the FSU faculty member an instant favorite among readers of the genre.
The Washington Post called "The Godfather's Revenge" "popular fiction at its best." Entertainment Weekly said, " Winegardner's second sequel to Puzo's novel is everything it should be: nuanced, chilling, and threaded with intrigue...you probably won't be able to put this one down."
"Winegardner produced 'The Godfather Returns' in 2004," the Chicago Sun-Times said. "He knocked it out of the park then and does so again with the follow-up, 'The Godfather's Revenge'....In this 'Godfather' novel and the previous one, Winegardner is like an expert restorer of a painting by an Old Master....through his fine style, craft and attention to character, he sheds new light and adds greater depth to the familiar. What's more, Winegardner is a master of plot."
Winegardner got the original "Godfather" assignment in February 2003. "After soliciting book proposals from numerous well-known writers around the nation, Random House announced live on NBC's "The Today Show" that it had selected Winegardner to write the sequel to Puzo's novel," said the Tallahassee Democrat's Mark Hinson. "Winegardner's contributions fill in the missing years during the '60s and '70s between the end of the films "The Godfather, Part II" (1974) and "The Godfather, Part III" (1990)."
Asked why he wrote a second sequel Winegardner said, "Pretty early on I realized I had more to say than could be fit in one book," he says. "1955 to 1977-that's 24 years. How could all that fit in one book? It couldn't. The late '50s and early '60s were the golden years of the Mafia. That makes it hard to squeeze everything in."
So from early on in the process of writing "The Godfather Returns," the plan was to end the book with a "satisfying cliffhanger ending" that would serve as a bridge to a second book.
In 2001, when Jonathan Karp, Puzo's editor at Random House, went looking for a writer to carry on the "Godfather" saga, Winegardner made it onto his short list of possibilities. "We wanted an original voice, someone who would bring artistry and vision to the Corleone saga," Karp said, as reported in a news release by the N.Y. artist community Yaddo where Winegardner sometimes works. "From the dozens of contenders, we unanimously agreed that the best candidate was Mark Winegardner."
Winegardner seemed a natural choice to Karp for a number of reasons. In his early 40s, he was about the same age as Puzo had been when he wrote The Godfather, and, more important, he was at about the same stage in his career. At the time, Puzo had established himself as a serious writer with a number of literary novels under his belt. "The Godfather" was a complete departure for him, Winegardner notes. "He was trying to sell out and write a bestseller."
When "The Godfather Returns" was released in November 2004, it met glowing reviews. Sarah Vowell in the New York Times Book Review termed it "a real pleasure, a fine, swirling epic-bitter, touching, funny and true." Jeff Guinn of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram described Nick Geraci as "one of the most interesting, multi-dimensional characters in recent fictional memory," and concluded, "Most Puzo fans would have gladly settled for more of exactly the same, and Winegardner instead is giving them something that, in critical ways (more character development and depth, more subtle storytelling) exceeds the original." And Liz Smith of the New York Post summed it up this way: "A mighty wow of a read. I couldn't put it down and spent two feverish days and nights putting off everything else to finish the saga of the Corleones."
Winegardner is also the author of a number of other critically acclaimed books, "Crooked River Burning" and "Veracruz Blues."
His books have been chosen as among the best of the year by The New York Times Book Review, the New York Public Library, The American Library Association, USA Today, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Sun-Times, and his work has appeared in such magazines as Doubletake, GQ, Men's Journal, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy, Ploughshares, Story Quarterly, and TriQuarterly. In 2002, he was named the Janet Burroway Professor of English.
For more information about Winegardner and "The Godfather's Revenge," visit www.markwinegardner.com and see Research in Review, Summer/Fall 2006.