Landfall is a romance — a romance in which the president repeatedly intercedes, rom-com fashion — set against the machinations concerning the administration’s defining failure in Iraq ... Mallon’s portrayals of most of his well-known main characters are flattering. But he’s also entertainingly bitchy ... the [George W. Bush] of Landfall is unbelievably wonderful. He makes charming fun of his reputation for ignorance In this book his biggest problem, which Mallon diagnoses well, is a fundamental uneasiness, the lack of an even keel ... I was surprised how little space such a thoughtful writer devotes in this long novel to the awful particulars of its central catastrophe. He’s too easy on everyone ... But still, Landfall is smart and knowing and absorbing. It is to novels as good studio movies are to movies — extremely well made, satisfying if you have a taste for the genre, occasionally excellent. The prose is a pleasure ... Fiction is supposed to provide glimpses inside people different from us. As a one-of-a-kind artifact of pre-2016 Late Republicanism, Landfall is fascinating.
At its best, Mallon’s amusing new novel, Landfall, operates like the thought-bubble we’d always wanted ... Mallon has done his homework and his novel delves, at times a tad too exhaustively, into the kaleidoscope of events and characters of the Bush era — everyone from Christopher Hitchens and John Edwards to Merv Griffin and Nancy Reagan ... Landfall occasionally gets a bit too goofy, such as a clunky scene that comes out of nowhere — and adds little to the narrative — involving a sex tryst between a high-ranking U.S. official and a Canadian diplomat.
As in Mr. Mallon’s many other novels, the writing is crisp and witty, the central characters complex and sympathetic in surprising ways, the narrative structure tight. The constant use of italics, as if Mr. Mallon doesn’t trust his readers to know where to place the emphasis, is one mild annoyance in an otherwise superbly written novel ... This is a work of the imagination, and I have no firsthand knowledge of the 43rd president, but Mr. Mallon’s rendering is far more faithful to the evidence than the caricatures we read for a decade in the media.
Mallon’s work is breathtaking in its depth and humanity. He has turned his focused microscope on recent history and unlocked the covert lives of public figures. Part love story and part tragic drama that never ceases to keep the reader interested and involved.
Incisive ... Mallon demonstrates great skill in animating a large cast of prominent personalities ... Readers will find some nods to today’s political dramas ... Witty conversation ensues as scenes shift between meetings, speeches, elegant dinners, and other domestic and international gatherings, while the depiction of flooded New Orleans is starkly sobering ... Mallon’s latest fictional portrayal of the American political scene is impressively detailed and enticingly readable.
Full of intrigue. It’s swiftly told in convincing detail. Mallon has a deft touch. There are plenty of unexpected twists and turns ... Parts of the book are fiction but there is plenty of fictionalized nonfiction that rings true. It’s a very good novel of this particular genre.
Perhaps surprisingly, Mallon treats George W. Bush largely with respect here, painting him with a level of depth and insight that eluded his popular image. But, true or not, there is a serious ick factor in putting Condi Rice in bed with Canadian foreign minister Peter MacKay, and it’s actually painful to read ... It’s obvious that Mallon put in significant time in newspaper morgues and other archives, and one can imagine the day-by-day timeline that probably papered the walls of his writing space. But it gets old, the constant nudge-in-the-ribcage 'remember this?' quality...
Landfall is a big, minutiae-crammed novel, driven by the ambivalence and agonies of its main characters and leavened with the catty wit of its supporting cast ... Still, it’s the characters’ experiences in Baghdad and New Orleans during Katrina that anchor the book ... The flow of Mallon’s prose is sometimes tripped up by clumsy but necessary forays into who’s who and what’s what (a glossary of government-agency acronyms would help). But even in moments that start off feeling over-explanatory, closing phrases deliver genuine, shocking twists, especially where Allie is concerned ... Mallon’s slippery take on the Bush era may speak to readers, too.
On every level of the intentionality spectrum, the novel encourages readers not only to sympathize with Bush but, by extension, to exonerate him ... a prodigious amount of research congregates right beneath the chatty, fast-moving surface of the plot ... The book bristles with cast. Mallon knew a great many of the newsmakers of the day, and he’s read up infinitely on all the others, and he’s determined to cram every last member of that cast into Landfall ... No anguish and precious little wrong in Landfall, but readers can at least hope that the author’s comments about bringing a trilogy to a close are true. Seeing this kind of tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner nonsense doled out to first Nixon then Reagan and now Bush has been trying enough.
If Mallon tries too hard to cram in references to every major news story of the day, Landfall is still a well-researched view of the jealousies and back-room dealings of early 21st-century American politics.
Mallon’s knowledgeable and diamond-hard portraits of actual Washington insiders across the political spectrum, from showboating John Edwards (Mallon’s most acid character sketch) to tough-as-nails Barbara Bush (no sweet little old lady in pearls here). Nonetheless, the fact that Ross and Allie change their views based on experiences on the ground makes a refreshing—and one suspects deliberate—contrast with the dug-in positions of today’s political partisans ... Marvelously detailed, often darkly funny, as informative as it is entertaining. Mallon may well be the 21st century’s Anthony Trollope.
Fantastic ... hardly seem[s] the stuff of a fictional narrative ... Mallon provides juicy, humanized depictions of interactions between the familiar talking heads of state that will leave readers wondering how much of what he portrays is imagined ... makes a fascinating flesh-and-blood spectacle out of moments now relegated to history.
