Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years

by Thomas Mallon

Adding to a fiction chronicle that has already spanned American history from the Lincoln assassination to the Watergate scandal, Thomas Mallon now brings to life the tumultuous administration of the most consequential and enigmatic president in modern times.
 
Finale captures the crusading ideologies, blunders, and glamour of the still-hotly-debated Reagan years, taking readers to the political gridiron of Washington, the wealthiest enclaves of Southern California, and the volcanic landscape of Iceland, where the president engages in two almost apocalyptic days of negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev.
 
Along with Soviet dissidents, illegal-arms traders, and antinuclear activists, the novel’s memorable characters include Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter, Pamela Harriman, John W. Hinckley, Jr. (Reagan’s would-be assassin), and even Bette Davis, with whom the president had long ago appeared onscreen. Several figures—including a humbled, crafty Richard Nixon; the young, brilliantly acerbic Christopher Hitchens; and an anxious, astrology-dependent Nancy Reagan (on the verge of a terrible realization)—become the eyes through which readers see the last convulsions of the Cold War, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and a political revolution.
 
At the center of it all—but forever out of reach—is Ronald Reagan himself, whose genial remoteness confounds his subordinates, his children, and the citizens who elected him.
 
Finale is the book that Thomas Mallon’s work has been building toward for years.  It is the most entertaining and panoramic novel about American politics since Advise and Consent, more than a half century ago.

A New York Times Notable Book

One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, The Daily Beast, The Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Politics, Presidents, Novels, American History, Literary Fiction

462 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2015

About the author

Thomas Mallon is an American novelist, essayist, and critic. His novels are renowned for their attention to historical detail and context and for the author's crisp wit and interest in the "bystanders" to larger historical events. He is the author of ten books of fiction, including Henry and Clara, Two Moons, Dewey Defeats Truman, Aurora 7, Bandbox, Fellow Travelers (recently adapted into a miniseries by the same name), Watergate, Finale, Landfall, and most recently Up With the Sun. He has also published nonfiction on plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One's Own), letters (Yours Ever) and the John F. Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine's Garage), as well as two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact).
He is a former literary editor of Gentleman's Quarterly, where he wrote the "Doubting Thomas" column in the 1990s, and has contributed frequently to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, and other periodicals. He was appointed a member of the National Council on the Humanities in 2002 and served as Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2005 to 2006.
His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Vursell prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinguished prose style. He was elected as a new member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

”What didn’t the president know, and when did he forget it?”


I’m going to get away with it. They love me. Now, what was I supposed to forget? Oh horsepucky, I’ll have to ask Nancy when she tucks me into bed tonight.

Thomas Mallon follows up his wonderful book on Watergate to tackle the final years of the Ronald Reagan administration. The reader of this book becomes a nebulous creature allowed to float from Reagan himself, to Nancy Reagan, to Pamela Harriman, to Christopher Hitchens, to John Hinckley, Jr., to Jimmy Carter, and of course, we can’t forget the Dark Lord himself, Richard Nixon. We listen in on their conversations and even their inner thoughts. Mallon completely immerses the reader into 1986 and mires them into the rising muck of the Iran Contra affairs, the midterm elections, and the near disaster of the nuclear summit in Reykjavik, but also treats the reader to a view of Reagan that very well may change their views of the man and the history he influenced.

Vigdis Finnbogadottir, President of Iceland, found herself at the center of the universe in 1986 when Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev decided to hold their meeting on nuclear weapon proliferation in Reykjavik. She didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Reagan, but she is an astute woman. She formed an impression of the man. ”Vigdis was already thinking that she’d never be able to tell her friends what he was like. He seemed all at once very close and far away; rather silly and a little mystical. Like the canvas-and-fur coat, he was composed of two elements that seemed to alternate but never add up. She could hear herself telling those friends that he might be the most deeply shallow man she’d ever met. It would not be a witticism, and she would mean it, she thought, more as a compliment than criticism.”


Vigdis Finnbogadottir is seen here walking with Ronald Reagan in 1986. She is important because she is the first woman president of Iceland, but also of Europe, and the world’s first democratically, directly elected female president. The coat Reagan is wearing was not Nancy approved and disappeared as soon as an aide could apprehend it, beat it to death, and incinerate it in the nearest volcano.

I recently read H. W. Brand’s Reagan: the Life, and one of the things that his briefers, in preparing him for the meeting in Reykjavik, found most disturbing about POTUS was his lack of knowledge about the world outside the bubble he’d managed to live in his whole life. Even those who worked with him for decades observed him to be as much an enigma twenty years later as when they first met him. He was gregarious, warm, funny, but there was always a distance remaining between a friend and himself, even as he put a grandfatherly hand on their shoulder and with a twinkle in his eye made them feel like they were important to him. Even Nancy, in this book, questions at several points how well she actually knew him.

Hitchens tries to wrap his mind around the concept of Reagan.

”’Idiot or idiot savant?’ Hitchens asked the man from the Telegraph.

‘Geopolitical genius,’ the man replied.

‘I’m so relieved to know that,’ said Hitchens. ‘To think it had somehow eluded me.’

‘I’m not having you on,’ the man from the Telegraph responded.”


Christopher Hitchens, the acerbic reporter who lived by his brilliant wit and his tenacious curiosity, was a thorn in the sides of friends and enemies alike. Truth for him trumped any loyalty.

Whatever you want to sling at Reagan, whether it be that he is ”deeply shallow” or unengaged or an idiot, he managed to somehow become one of the most beloved presidents of the Republican Party, despite a mountain of evidence indicating that something was rotten in the state of Reaganmark. By 1986, the public was not as enamored with Reaganomics or the Star Wars program that proved a radioactive monkey wrench in the talks in Reykjavik. In fact, in the mid-term elections Reagan campaigned for 7 of the Republicans up for re-election and lost 6 of those elections. In all, the Republicans lost 8 seats and flipped the Senate from Republican control to Democrat. For any president, that is a mandate that the public isn’t exactly happy with the direction of the country.

Nancy is worried whether he will be allowed to fulfill his second term. She is prepared for the worse. The Alzheimer's that should have kept him from running for a second term is much worse, not to mention the turbulent waters surrounding the Iran Contra Affairs that could lead to impeachment, but Reagan is the teflon man. Riding to his rescue with a shiny sword and a rapier wit is a Colonel by the name of Oliver North.

Behind the scenes is the Monster of the Watergate Lagoon, Richard Nixon. He has his informers in the Reagan Administration and keeps a steady flurry of advice flowing to the President and the ones around him. A fiction writer would be enthralled with a creation like Nixon. They might feel the need to kill him off, but he is such a great villain, a man ruled by paranoid delusion, the Heathcliff of politics that there might be some crocodile tears when they write the final scene that would see him plunging off a cliff, the creature of his own demise. ”Even now he missed the brooding late nights with a legal pad on his lap, the hours when he would let the bold and dark thoughts chase one another inside his head.”


As things became more dire regarding the Iran Contra Affair, Tricky Dick started getting more communication from the Reagan administration asking for advice.

I’m not even going to discuss in the detail she deserves, Pamela Harriman. She stole men’s names and never relinquished them. She made three successful marriages, each adding to her fortune and her influence. She was a power player behind the scenes of 1980s politics, wielding her money like Thor’s hammer to smash her Republican adversaries. She was a remarkably ambitious woman whom anyone would be pleased to call a friend and would rue the day they became her enemy.

So what did Ronnie forget? What did he pretend to forget? We will never really know. Did he know, and when did he know it? The administration was fortunate that George H. W. Bush was elected president in 1988. 138 Reagan administration officials were investigated, indicted, or convicted, the most of any presidential administration in the history of the United States. Bush pardoned six officials who all would have most certainly been convicted. It sort of puts the impeachment trials of William Jefferson Clinton in perspective.

Mallon manages to bring all these players to life and many, many more than what I’ve discussed in this review. I was enthralled and stayed up late into the night reading as if I were binge watching a compelling TV show like Stranger Things or House of Cards. I felt like, while reading this book, that I’d just stepped out of a time machine and volunteered for the Reagan administration. I promptly hurled my pork and beans and beer all over Dick Cheney’s tasselled loafers. I’m not sure if that was from the bumpy ride back in time or from finding myself playing a Republican. Luckily, I had a great role model. Reagan played the role of his life and fooled us all.

You can also read my Watergate Review.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mallon has created a second superbly crafted that paints the presidency of a strong American surrounded by turmoil. Using his strength within in the historical fiction genre, Mallon parachutes the reader into the life of Ronald Reagan at a time when the world was watching, and holding their collective breath. After a preface that lays the groundwork for the bitterness of the '76 campaign and dear Nancy's obsession with the insights of her astrologer, the reader finds themselves lodged into a narrative between August and December of 1986. Within that period, President Reagan was juggling a few items of greatest importance to him: retaining a Senate majority during the mid-term elections, continuing the discussion of a thawing of relations with the Soviets, and a pesky item around backing the Contras in Central America while selling arms to Iran. As the narrative progresses, the reader learns much of the role played by Nancy Reagan, the apparent marionette behind the president's decision-making abilities. When not bemoaning the lack of support she felt she got from Congress on her 'Just Say No!' initiative, Nancy was either trying to oust the Chief of Staff, Don Regan, or trying to negotiate an early abdication from the White House after learning of the placement of Uranus in relation to Saturn. As Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to meet in Reykjavik to discuss nuclear disarmament, the world watched. These tense and critical negotiations ensued over a weekend as the two world leaders tried to hammer-out what might be the end to the Cold War, yet failed abysmally to come to a concrete agreement. Throughout that period of cut-throat politics, dead 'Mommy' could help but complain from back in Washington that her 'Ronnie' was being handled and given poor information. It is a minute spark in a Lebanese magazine that turns heads away from the disjointed and fruitless summit and towards an apparent plan within the president's National Security team to sell weapons to Iran and funnel that money to the Contras in Nicaragua and El Salvador. This event, which the president feigned no knowledge about, turned the tables in the late autumn and paralysed the GOP in their quest for Senate supremacy. Thereafter, the Reagans were left to limp towards 1987 and the final quarter of their time in the White House, a blemish that could be removed with a Hollywood smile and a final rally to support the Gipper. With wonderful side and backstories flowing throughout, Mallon develops a wonderfully argued novel that places the reins of power outside of Ronald W. Reagan and firmly in the hands of his manipulative and driven wife. A must-read for any who love political fiction with a sense of reality permeating throughout.

Mallon has a wonderful way of capturing reality in a well-paced narrative. The reader is left feeling that they are in the midst of the action, rather than an omnipotent observer. While there is no way to substantiate many of the conversations had within the pages of this book, it is likely that (the dialogue) which keeps it from being pure fact. Historical fiction is at its best when left to the devices of Thomas Mallon, as he has shown on at least a few occasions. The reader is also treated to many characters that enrich the story and offer their own historical marker, leaving the tale with a much more complex and lasting impression on those who take the time to digest all that is on offer. While I would have preferred a focus on Iran Contra and how Reagan bumbled his way through it, use of Reykjavik and Nancy's puppeteering was equally interesting, especially as it is left to the reader to determine if a woman is reading the stars out her window in the California night and sending messages through the First Lady to make major political decisions. Mallon's sarcastic style is not lost, nor is his desire to argue that there were many heavy hitters seeking to influence decisions in the West Wing. Brilliant and one can hope
there are more presidential novels to come.

Kudos, Mr. Mallon for showing me how fun and exciting political writing can be. I can only hope your quiver is full of more stories like this to keep your fans sated.

Like/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

Several weeks ago, I had the delight of seeing the author of "FINALE: A Novel of the Reagan Years" at a book reading at a local independent bookstore. He was very engaging, funny, and showed a rare gift for mimicry, evoking the voices of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and a few other historical figures from the mid to late 1980s.

Shortly after that experience, I began reading this novel and as someone who was living in the era he describes, it was a treat to see events being played out from the perspectives of a variety of characters, both fictional and historical. The novel begins on the final day of the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City in which Ronald Reagan, though having lost the nomination to Gerald Ford, is allowed to speak on the convention floor. He makes a rousing speech which moves the hearts of the party delegates, leaving many of them to wonder if they had chosen the right man to be their standard bearer against Jimmy Carter in the fall campaign.

Then the reader is carried through the heart of the Reagan years, with a special focus placed on the October 1986 Reykjavik Summit between Reagan and Gorbachev of the USSR and the emerging Iran-Contra scandal which arose in the immediate aftermath of the 1986 midterm Congressional elections, which saw the Democrats regain control of the Senate and maintain their majority in the House of Representatives.

Some of the novel's most memorable characters are "Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter, Pamela Harriman, John W. Hinckley Jr. (Reagan's would-be assassin), and even Bette Davis, with whom [President Reagan] had long ago appeared onscreen." Also making appearances are "a humbled, crafty Richard Nixon [who --- through his relationship with Anders Little, an apostate Democrat, true believer in the Reagan Revolution and staffer on the National Security Council --- maintains in-house contacts with the Administration]; the young, brilliantly acerbic Christopher Hitchens; and an anxious, astrology-dependent Nancy Reagan", fiercely protective of her Ronnie and his presidential legacy. All of these characters are "the eyes through which readers see the last convulsions of the Cold War, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and a political revolution."

This was a novel with which I felt completely at home the more I read it. There were several passages in it which made me LAUGH OUT LOUD, rekindling many memories of those distant years. The depictions of Reagan in "FINALE" also resonated with me in certain ways. As a 17-year old in February 1982, I had been part of a group of high school seniors (all of us winners of national scholarships) who had been invited to the White House, where Reagan spoke to us for half an hour. All I will say about that experience is that I can understand why there were many Americans who found him to be a nice, likeable guy.

Read "FINALE" and lose yourself vicariously in what was a vastly interesting, at times perilous, and fun era.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

To paraphrase George Orwell, all U.S. presidents are mythic but some are more mythic than others.

Ronald Reagan has always been a lighting rod, lionized by some, demonized by others. Yet at his core, he was unknowable, evading a careful analysis by his own hand-picked biographer. Thomas Mallon has no intention of analyzing Reagan, nor does he have an axe to grind. Accordingly, his novel should stand on its own merits, not as a litmus test about what readers may think of the Reagan years.

Those who are familiar with Mr. Mallon’s last book, Watergate, will see a similar structure in this one. There are many familiar – and even unexpected – real-life characters who populate Finale: Richard Nixon, George Schultz, Pamela Harriman, Christopher Hitchens (a good friend of the author’s), Bette Davis, Merv Griffin, John Hinckley, daughter Maureen and inevitably, astrologer Jane Quigley among others. But some of the characters are figments of Mr. Mallon’s fertile imagination, and are portrayed so wonderfully that it’s a good thing that he places a list of characters at the beginning (to tell who is real and who is fictional).

The heart of the book takes place in Reykjavik, Iceland, where Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in an unprecedented summit. At the time, the two leaders came within inches of an historic agreement to reduce all nuclear arms to zero; only the so-called “Star Wars” defense missiles stood in the way. The audacity of this incredible vision for disarmament – so tantalizingly close! – when two men had it in their power to begin the world all over again. It makes for incredibly arresting reading and a nostalgia that that moment was allowed to slip from our collective grasp.

The backdrop of the 1980s is all here: antinuclear activists, the AIDS epidemic, Iran-gate, and just a hint of the Alzheimer’s that would rob the Great Communicator of one of his greatest gifts. Whether the president’s mental terrain was vastly more complicated than anything yet reckoned or whether the cupboard really was bare depends on who is doing the judging.

All the characters – Republicans and Democrats, family members and lobbyists – come across as incredibly flawed, incredibly human. And at the center stands Ronald Reagan, unknowable, indefinable, yet central to every bit of the action that swirls around him.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

To appreciate this book, you really need to have lived through the 80's and have been politically aware. You will particularly need to know who Pamela Harriman is and something about Christopher Hitchens. It helps, but is not necessary, to be able to stretch back to Thomas Dewey as these characters do.

The fun of this novel is how Thomas Mallon can turn a phrase but the hilarity is his speculation on the thoughts of the characters. His takes are priceless. He begins with Richard Nixon watching the 1976 Republican Convention nominate Gerald Ford, mentally assessing his former supporters in the party. Later he has Nancy Reagan thinking it was probably good that Jimmy Carter beat Ford, since as a one termer he paved the way for Ronnie, a term coinciding with times her daughter was most embarrassing would have been a bad time to be in the public eye. One of the funniest takes is Mallon on Pamela (Digby Churchill Hayward) Harriman speculating on having pursued her (courtesan) "career" through Ronald Reagan (better to marry a man who made it that one you had to build).

There is the background of 80's music and a glimpse of gay Republicans coping with AIDS. There are small asides on the state of technology: when a copier isn't available the Russians might have carbon paper and Nixon realized the First Lady might not know what a fax is.

Mallon sees Reagan as inscrutable to all including Nancy. Nixon looms large in this novel, with Mallon seeing him engaged and pulling strings.

If you like a political novel, know the key players and issues of the 80's. you will find this book a lot of fun.

[robin friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Novel Of Ronald And Nancy Reagan

Books have their time for readers, and this was not the proper time for me to read Thomas Mallon's 2015 novel, "Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years". As with so many Americans, I am saturated and dismayed by the current presidential election (2016) and wish it were over at last. With all the politicking and unseemliness of the current contest, and my dissatisfaction with both major party candidates, it was an unwelcome overload to be thrust into the tumultuous policy world of 1986 in Ronald Reagan's presidency. I gave this book more room than I might otherwise have done with the knowledge that Thomas Mallon was a Republican and thus would be more likely to attempt a balanced view of his particular subject. With allowances for the bad timing, I did not, on the whole, enjoy this book.

The book is a historical novel which the author properly observes is "a work of fiction, not history". The novel covers the failed summit in Iceland and the beginning disclosures and hearings of the Iran Contra scandal. There is much more to the book. In fact, it would be overloaded even without the current presidential contest. The book includes a cast of characters so large, most historical but some fictional, that they must be listed in long columns over four pages. The fictitious characters in the book and the sub-plots in which they figure bog the book down. They are far less interesting that the actual people and historical events. The events, personal and political, discussed in the book are complex and frequently momentous. The book offers a sense of complexity and character, including a perceptive, sympathetic portrayal of the disgraced former president, Richard Nixon. Overall, this long book makes the reader feel its length. It is slow and dull, unforgivable characteristics of a novel. The writing is episodic and brilliant in places. Unfortunately, the style concentrates on witticisms and on short-term portrayals rather than on the larger picture. The book was for the most part unrewarding.

The subtitle "A Novel of the Reagan Years" suggests the overly broad scope of the book. The title of this review suggests what I found the strongest theme of the book: the relationship between President Reagan and the First Lady. The novel shows well the enigmatic character of the president and how difficult, in the views of everyone who knew or studied the man, he was to get to know or to understand. Nancy Reagan came in for a great deal of ridicule and criticism during her time as First Lady. She is portrayed here warts and all, including with her fixation on astrology. But the couple is shown as truly loving one another. And Ronald Reagan is shown as having a grip on himself and on his responsibilities. Many were critical of Reagan because of his background as an actor and their own bias that only an intellectual could function as the president. Whatever the case, there was more to Reagan than to his critics, as he is portrayed in this book.

There were some moving, perceptive moments but not enough to save the book from its dullness. For example, late in the book Reagan attends a function at the Kennedy Center honoring various artists, including Bette Davis, for their achievements. Davis and the author offer the following meditation on Reagan.

"He was, she realized, curiously like the Hollywood Communists he would spend so many years fighting: he believed that pictures should give the audience not what they wanted -- that was the studio executive view -- but what they needed, some idealized view of a world toward which they should work and aspire. For the film-business reds, who'd always bored her, that was a workers' paradise; for Ronnie it was a nice small town with some straight-up white steeples. But it amounted to the same thing: both he and the Communists thought that films existed for the people who went to see them. This moderately intelligent boy wanted to lose himself in something bigger, some higher purpose, whereas she knew the screen had been created simply as something for her to crash through: it was the ring of fire through which the circus lion leapt to fulfill itself: no one else."

One of Mallon's observations about Nancy Reagan is equally insightful, and shorter. It occurs during a New Year's Eve party in California, and the couple have been having a small quarrel over one of Nancy's recommendations.

"She looked up at the stars in the desert sky and knew they meant nothing. Astrology was no more real than religion or a script. That she pretended to believe it wasn't a weakness; it was a sign of will and self-discipline, an ability to pull the wool over her own eyes if that's what it took to feel better and get through."

Although the book was tedious, it did make me remember and think about Ronald Reagan. Thinking about Reagan and his First Lady made me feel better and gave me hope that in difficult times the United States will yet fulfill Reagan's vision of "a city on a hill".

Robin Friedman

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the presidential election season unfolds Republicans are faced with a candidate that calls for a major shift away from its roots that emerged in the 1980s. During the primary season when candidates fought for the mantle of Ronald Reagan, another candidate introduced us to Trumpism. What Trumpism purports to be is anyone’s guess, but it certainly does not conform to the ideology that was the core of Reaganism. Thomas Mallon’s latest historical novel and ninth book, FINALE: A NOVEL OF THE REAGAN YEARS explores the last few years of the Reagan administration focusing on the Gorbachev-Reagan relationship and nuclear diplomacy, the developing Iran-Contra scandal, and the domestic politics of the period. In doing so Mallon has conducted a tremendous amount of research that produces a novel, aside from a few fictional characters that is essentially historically accurate. Mallon writes in a breezy manner that captures Washington’s political and social world and allows the reader to experience hard ball politics, cattiness, and all the emotions that are on display on a daily basis as the Reagan administration and its supporters and detractors strive to achieve their agenda.

FINALE is a wonderful blend of history and fiction that begins with Richard Nixon watching the 1976 Republican national convention on television offering negative comments about Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, and Ronald Reagan. Mallon immediately introduces us to the former president who only two years after resigning his office is calculating how to restore his reputation. Mallon focuses a great deal of attention on Nixon as he tries to influence the nuclear diplomacy of the period through a wonderful fictional character, Anders Little, an Assistant Director, Arms Control, National Security Council, who on the one hand becomes Nixon’s mole throughout the nuclear talks at Reykjavik, Iceland, and on a personal level is trying to figure out his own sexuality. Nixon comes across as a very solicitous husband in dealing with his wife Pat’s health who experienced two strokes over a short period of time. But when one thinks of how Nixon treated her during most of their marriage I wonder if Mallon was trying to humanize the disgraced president or pose comic relief.

Mallon does not miss a beat as his characters take verbal swipes at each other throughout the dialogue. Nancy Reagan, who can only be described as a self-centered nasty individual who cares only for what is best for her husband. Mrs. Reagan seems to despise a number of people, particularly her husband’s Chief of Staff, Donald Regan, former president Jimmy Carter and his family, and most everyone else except for Merv Griffin who is her confidante. Nancy, known as “mommy,” within her small circle plans her husband’s trips, negotiations, and politics by consulting her “astrological” advisor and the description offered is extremely accurate. Mallon’s writing drips with wit and sarcasm, particularly in describing the “gaze,” that appears each time she looks over at her “Ronnie.” Her rivalry with Pamela Harriman, the wife of former Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averill Harriman who recently passed away, is fascinating as two powerful women with different agendas describe each other in a rather petty fashion, and it appears that each has their own enemies list. Richard Nixon’s petty hatreds are also present for all to observe as he rehashes his past enemies list.

The novel seems to center on arms control talks with the developing relationship between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev as the key component to producing a successful treaty. Many familiar historical figures are present; Secretary of State George Schultz, Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, NSC Head John Poindexter, arms negotiators like Paul Nitze and others are intermingled with a number of fictitious characters, like Anders Little and Anne Macmurray, divorced from a failed politician who has ties to the Contras in Nicaragua, as well as being an anti-nuclear activist. Aside from the arms talks, Mallon integrates many actual historical events of the period. The Senate vote concerning sanctions against South Africa, the Florida Senate race between Governor Bob Graham and Senator Paula Hawkins, parole hearings for John Hinckley, and constant allusions to the aids epidemic among the history of the period that is intertwined in the story. However, the most important issue that emerges are the events leading up to the Iran-Contra scandal.

A number of the historical and fictional characters are involved with illegal aid to the Contras who are fighting the Sandinistas for control of Nicaragua. Oliver North and company make their appearance and a few fictitious individuals will inadvertently become involved. The history of the scandal Mallon describes follows the pattern of historical accuracy tinged with fictional dialogue. To enhance the novel Mallon employs Christopher Hitchens, an English journalist for the Spectator, who recently passed away from cancer as a vehicle to uncover information dealing with events and as a foil for a number of characters that moves the novel forward. In addition, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appears to “buck up Ronnie” when things don’t go her way.

Obviously the protagonist of the novel is the Republican Party’s patron saint, Ronald Reagan. Throughout the novel Reagan’s legacy seems to be on the line, as Nancy Reagan reminds us throughout the book. There is a sense of panic within Reagan’s inner circle as events lead up to arms talks in Reykjavik at the same time the Iran-Contra scandal is brewing. The reader is presented with a 40th president who either bordering on issues is related to later Alzheimer’s or is a very effective and shrewd negotiator. As the novel progresses it is interesting to think of Reagan as a “Teflon president,” because a number of his actions were illegal, but so soon after Nixon the country did not have the stomach to endure another impeachment process. Reagan’s propensity to always see the positive is repeatedly used by Mallon. As Robert Draper describes in his New York Times review, Mallon makes a virtue out of Reagan’s opacity. “Is the principal character, as one observer in the book puts it, an idiot or an idiot savant? Mallon all but dares us to consider him to be the former.” (NYT, September 16, 2015)

Overall, the book is a fascinating read as Mallon provides real and fictional glimpses into how historical events evolved in 1986 and 1987. For history buffs the material will satisfy, and for general readers it is a tight and revealing portrait of personal relationships of the powerful and how they conducted themselves with so much on the line developing around them.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fair warning: I’m a lifelong political junkie. I vividly recall an argument with my little brother about the Dewey-Truman campaign in 1948, when I was seven. (Arthur called the President “Twu-man.”) So, I can’t approach any historical treatment about politics, fictional or not, except on the basis of my own political perspective. Just so you know: I am not and never have been a card-carrying member of the Republican Party.

Ronald Reagan through a glass, darkly

In Thomas Mallon’s new novel, Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years, our fortieth President emerges as an enigmatic figure. Alternately muddle-headed and brilliantly articulate, Mallon’s Reagan is hard to read. In the author’s telling, Nancy Reagan sums up her view of the man after half a century of marriage in that spirit: “she didn’t know who he was, and she never had.” Another character in the novel remarks in conversation that “‘he’s the most impersonally warm man I’ve ever encountered. [His staff] won’t know how to figure him out.'” Yet another looked on him as “the most deeply shallow man she’d ever met.”

The novel opens with a prologue set at the 1976 Republican National Convention, when Reagan was narrowly nosed out of the nomination by the appointed President, Gerald Ford. Quickly, then, the action shifts to a decade later, midway through Reagan’s second term. Much of the story then revolves around two seminal events in his Presidency. First among these was the Reykjavik Summit with Mikhail Gorbachev, where the two world leaders flirted with an end to nuclear weapons. The novel’s climax comes with the Iran-Contra scandal. This debacle, which many observers (including me) thought to be even more egregious a violation of ethics and the law than Watergate, raised serious questions about whether the President himself had been aware of the highly illegal actions of his staff. At any rate, the blame fell on Reagan’s National Security Adviser, Admiral John Poindexter, and Col. Oliver North on the NSC staff, who were selling arms to Iran and channeling the profits to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan opposition called the Contras.

Historical fiction at its best

Throughout Finale, Thomas Mallon takes the reader into the minds of Reagan himself, Nancy Reagan, and a host of other historical figures. The detail is extraordinary, the accuracy of his observations difficult to challenge. However, most of the action is viewed through the perspective of several fictional characters whom Mallon places on the periphery of events.

Among the real-world figures Mallon portrays are Pamela Harriman, widow of former Ambassador to Moscow and London and former New York Governor W. Averill Harriman; Richard Nixon; former UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick; Christopher Hitchens, the acerbic British journalist who wrote extensively (and brilliantly) about politics on both sides of the Atlantic; the multimillionaire publisher of the wildly successful TV Guide, Walter Annenberg; former White House Chief of Staff Mike Deaver; late-night talk-show host and multimillionaire investor Merv Griffin; and a number of less well-known and less consequential individuals.

Fascinating characters

Mallon succeeds in making every one of his characters interesting. However, to my mind, the most engaging by far were Pamela Harriman, Christopher Hitchens, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and two fictional characters, Anders little (a minor staffer on the NSC) and Anne Macmurray Cox (the antinuclear activist ex-wife of a Right-Wing Republican activist and donor). Harriman and Hitchens were, in fact, fascinating characters in real life. For all I know, Jeane Kirkpatrick was, too.

Harriman, born Pamela Digby in the UK to an aristocratic family, married Winston Churchill’s son Randolph in 1939, as World War II was getting underway. Their son took his grandfather’s name and went on to an undistinguished career in Conservative politics. Seven years later she divorced Churchill and married a leading Broadway producer. Eleven years after that she married a wartime fling, W. Averill Harriman, who died in 1986 as the story progressed. Inheriting $100 million from her fourth husband, she reinvented herself as a Democratic king-maker, operating through the Political Action Committee she founded and ran, Democrats for the 80s, familiarly known as PamPAC.

Hitchens regarded himself as a socialist throughout much of his long career but turned away from the Left following 9/11, raising many eyebrows with his vociferous support of the Iraq War. In more recent times he was best known for his outspoken atheist views. Mallon portrays him as a cynical observer of the human comedy, an unusually bright reporter, and a magician with the English language who seemed incapable of uttering an uninteresting sentence.

About the author

Thomas Mallon has written seven historical novels among a total of sixteen books. He has won numerous awards for his work, both fiction and nonfiction.

Mallon’s two most recent novels look into the final years in the White House of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Perhaps Mallon chose them as subjects since they both merit treatment as tragic figures. However, there’s a hint of Mallon’s personal politics in his having ghostwritten Vice President Dan Quayle’s memoir. So, are we likely to see a future novel about Barack Obama’s two terms? Somehow, I doubt that.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was mildly curious what historical fiction about Ronald Reagan would be like. This author had done a previous novel on Nixon, but I've read a 1,000+ page bio of him already this year so I'm kind of Nixoned out. As it happens, Nixon is a primary character in Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years, so apparently I can't escape him no matter which way I turn.

Mallon chooses to write about only the last five months of 1986, which contain the Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev and the beginnings of the Iran-Contra scandal. Really, the two primary protagonists here are Nancy Reagan and a made-up character named Anders Little, who works on the National Security Council. Ronnie Reagan, Pamela Harriman, the journalist Christopher Hitchens, and a fictional fifty-something woman who is a Republican yet advocates for a nuclear freeze feature as near-protagonists. The needy Maureen Reagan has some entertaining scenes.

A few things feel shoehorned in: John Hinckley, who has no relevance to the narrative; Anders Little's homosexuality, which seems completely forced (he's twice divorced and at 38 is just discovering he might have feelings for men); the gay/AIDS subthemes; and the entire character of Christopher Hitchens. It turns out that Hitchens and Mallon were beloved friends, and fictionalizing him was "consoling." Some of the narrative is based on Hitchens' memoir Hitch-22. It also turns out that Mallon is gay, and a Republican, so there you go.

The fictionalized historical personages are more successful than the completely invented characters. Nancy Reagan is particularly well done, and I always brightened when she came back on the page.

Nancy had gotten over disliking the children's spouses, but they were still strangers to her, and she would never be comfortable with the bad casting. It always seemed to her that Doria, too old for Ron, and Dennis, too young for Maureen, should be married to each other.

[Antonio Nunez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed Mallon's Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years. It covers what seemed at the time as the unraveling of the Reagan presidency in 1986 starting with the failure of the President and Gorbachev to come to an agreement on disarmament in the Reykjavik summit and then the slow, lingering Iran-Contra scandal. I had lowered expectations about this book because I figured it couldn't be as good as Watergate: A Novel, where episodes were more familiar and (at least apparently) more important. I was wrong. Finale is like opening a time capsule from the mid-1980s. Bon Jovi. Black Reebok high-top sneakers. Morgan Fairchild. Fawn Hall. Shredding. Everything is there although the background research is unobtrusive,as it should be.

I did not live in the US at the time but everything was familiar and correct. While Nixon steals any scene in which he appears with his unerring intuition, the book also contains astute portraits of Jimmy Carter and Nancy Reagan. The Gipper himself doesn't come into focus but that is not Mr Mallon's fault. He was inscrutable. I also liked the courtesan cum ambassador Pamela Harriman, who engineered the Democratic takeover of Senate in the 1986 midterms. Some people have complained about the prominent role given to Chrisopher Hitchen, the journalist and writer, a good friend of Mr Mallon. I disagree. I think Hitch is a great character. I also enjoyed the fictional characters.

The novel shows that nearing its end, the Reagan presidency was deemed a failure by all the smart people and Reagan himself was classed as a lightweight and a bumbler. Since Mrs Reagan is still alive she must he very satisfied that the President is seen today as a historic figure, one of the three most important presidents in the 20th century.

I am looking forward to the final volume in Mr Mallon's Republican trilogy, which is to about George W Bush. While it is unlikely Bush's reputation will ever recover, it will be an interesting read.

[Kelley · Rating 1 out of 5]

ARC received courtesy of Goodreads.com Giveaway

After 150 pages I finally just gave up. I could not get into the story of "Finale". There were too many characters interacting too briefly to get a real feel for them. I found it impossible to care about the characters. I hardly ever give up on a book. Generally I will finish a book even if I hate it but I just couldn't make myself keep going with this one. The last straw for me was when it became clear that all of the characters would be portrayed with equal ambivalence. I need someone to like!

[John McDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thomas Mallon makes 2 points very clearly in this historical fiction, although it takes a while into the book to affirm them: 1) Ronald Reagan really did not have the mental faculties to make the momentous decisions he was required to make as President of the United States and 2) it was Nancy Reagan, and her strategies based upon the insights of an astrologer, that developed a path for President Reagan to be viewed by the public as a remarkable leader in momentous times.

This work did not have the pull that Watergate had, and one had the feeling that Mallon was not as hard on Reagan as the facts from that period suggest. It did not occur to me until about 300 pages into the book that Mallon was holds Reagan out as emotionally and mentally unequipped to enter nuclear test ban and prohibition treaties, since it struck many of us who lived from the beginning to the end of the Reagan years that hundreds of decisions that should have been made by him were made by others, perhaps because Reagan may have viewed the Presidency identically to the way he viewed just about everything else: a movie set with a horde of writers and actors ready to give the public a good show.

Mallon weaves the AIDs epidemic and homosexuality coming into public view, and he superficially deals with Iran-Contra. But he leaves alone the every subject that those who want to sanctify Reagan want highlighted at every opportunity: supply side economics, destruction (assisted by his British counterpart Margaret Thatcher) of the labor movements by attacking and diminishing the influence of individual unions, and what I, as someone who thinks of himself as fairly well versed in economics and economic matters, as fiscal and monetary policies that today look as though they were dreamed up by people beset with delusions and fantasy (a case in point: supply side economics). To me, the tax and economic reforms proposed by Reagan were the true scandals of the age, and they were left alone by Mallon. Indeed, it was even hard to get a surge of righteousness from any aspect of this book, except when Terry Dolan, NCPAC's founder, who publicly castigated homosexuals, himself contracted AIDS and died.

The story has a third point, I suppose, one so subtle and unnerving that it is never explicitly stated. Even though I had come of age just before the dawn of the Reagan era and followed carefully the economic changes his minions were imposing on the country, I was struck by how, today, the names associated with Reagan seemed so distant, so evaporated, so unmemorable to me, even though many of them received mentions regularly in the press and broadcast media: Schultz, Weinberger, Harriman, Hitchens, Deaver. Even Reagan and Nancy seemed bobbleheads from a distant age, and almost forgettable. It is a reminder that we are essentially dust and will return to dust and in some cases be returned to the dust. It is a sobering thought indeed.

[William Koon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I keep thinking of the old bum in the cattle car with Billy Pilgrim. “You think this bad? This ain’t bad.” Of course it was bad. And the old bum is the first American to perish on his way to Dresden. And the Reagan years were bad as Thomas Mallon points out so vividly in this engaging and engrossing novel taking place mostly between 1986-88.

Mallon has the flavor of Gore Vidal about him and a hint of E.L. Doctorow, but with a finer finish. I mean what other work can make you feel just the tiniest bit of compassion for Richard Nixon. I know I didn’t until I saw him weeping at Pat’s funeral. (I must admit my compassion vanished as the TV image disappeared into a very non-Nixonian pin point of light.) Yet here The Trickster is in disgrace creeping around the Gipper and trying to garner crumbs from Ronnie and the new boys as he lives in exile.

The characters we all know --from the Reagan children to the hilariously portrayed Merv Griffin. Mr. Mallon takes so many pokes at him that Griffin appears damaged like a voo doo doll. And Christopher Hitchens comes off not too clean, either. The question posed is Reagan an idiot or an idiot savant. He is the tired old actor with a few anecdotes and a major onset of Alzheimer’s disease as he lugs around the suitcase with controls to set off nuclear war.

The author adroitly mixes the real with some imagined characters. But then again could someone create a Jean Kirkpatrick and make her believable? Probably the weakest is the imagined character Anders Little, who flits about fly-like sensitively among major administration foibles. His metro-sexual meanderings have a false ring to them, much like the homosexual scene that has to appear in each Michael Chabon novel. Strange, that the only sexual scenes are rather chaste après-gay mornings.

And speaking of sex, my favorite character is Pamela Harrington, Averell Harrington’s widow. (Also the widow of Leland Hayward and ex of Randolph Churchill and the lover of fill in the blanks.) She slept her way to the Ambassadorship of France under Brother Bill. Ah, they don’t make ‘em like that any more.

But Mallon writes a delightful work which reminds us that with Cruz, Trump, Rubio and Clinton Femme we have not progressed much politically in the past thirty years. I am glad for a non-experimental, no magical realism, straight ahead work of engaging fiction with punctuation and characters and point of view and all of those other out of date literary modes and ideas.

My rating is actually 4.6. I don't round.

[Marvin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This Thomas Mallon novel picks up with Peter & Anne Cox, two of the principal (fictional) characters from the only other Mallon novel I’ve read, Dewey Defeats Truman. Now divorced and representing different states, they’re at the Republican national convention in 1976 that narrowly nominated Gerald Ford over Ronald Reagan. The novel then skips to 1986 and devotes 450 pages to the final months of that year. Although the topics of both novels seem like the kind of thing that would appeal to me, I was underwhelmed by the earlier novel, and I’m even less taken with this one. The multiple characters, both fictional and not, are actually mostly one-note caricatures, most notably Nancy Reagan. We get snippets jumping around from the perspective of Nancy Reagan, Richard Nixon, Pamela Harriman, Christopher Hitchens, & a couple of fictional political operatives. It feels to me like listening to a name dropper telling his or her favorite stories about the famous people he or she knows. I’m 112 pages in, and I still don’t have a sense for where this is headed or why I should care, so I’m giving up.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fresh, exciting historical fiction has such strong characterizations and immense humor, I read the book in 5 sessions. The way Mallon blends the various voices and disgruntled personalities (especially Richard Nixon, Nancy Reagan, even John Hinckley) is masterful. The laughs are surprising and plentiful, and they coincide with the dramatic sections detailing politics, AIDS, and other issues. The 80s memorabilia is the best. Everything from Waterpiks to Madonna to Nancy Reagan's discomfort with 80s entertainers performing at political events is handled with skill. A fantastic book.

[John Yingling · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not that I didn't like the book; I did. But so many of the characters come off as insufferable, snobbish, boorish, pompous jerks. I mentally slapped each one of these people over and over while listening to the audiobook. I would be heading for the hills after spending one minute with these stuffed shirts.

[F.C. Schaefer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having enjoyed Thomas Mallon’s WATERGATE, a piece of historical fiction centering on the 37th President of the United States, I eagerly picked up his FINALE: A HISTORY OF THE REAGAN YEARS to see how he treated the 40th occupant of that office. Again, Mallon mixes fictional characters with real life participants in history, some obscure and some surprising, and centers most of his action around the second half of 1986, a patch of time that included the Reykjavik Summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a hard fought mid-term election with the control of Senate on the line, and the revelation that the Reagan Administration was trading arms for hostages with the Ayatollah in Iran, while secretly funding the Contras, who were waging a guerilla war against the leftist Castro backed government in Nicaragua. Mallon’s book weaves a story that involves many different individuals, some of whom work in the White House, while others vigorously oppose it, and some who just enjoy drifting along in close proximity to power and glamour. Then there are those who observe and see through the facades the mighty and wealthy work so hard to put up.

I thought FINALE didn’t have as strong of narrative as WATERGATE, and maybe that is because the historical events of the latter were so dramatic, and the cast of characters involved so fascinating. But the strong point in FINALE is the way Mallon builds his characters here, both real and fictional, giving them distinctive voices and personalities that may not exactly jibe with the record, but who nevertheless leap off the page for me. Mallon has a great talent for portraying these historical personages not only as they would have liked for us to see them, but then showing us their faults, and allowing the more real person to be seen. The standout in this book for me is his portrayal of Nancy Reagan, the First Lady utterly and obsessively devoted to her “Ronnie,” an insecure woman who uses astrology to try and control a world filled with dangers, seen and unseen, who always believes that the men surrounding her husband in the White House are falling short of doing their best for him, and never forgetting those who hindered her husband’s ambitions, or failed in their efforts on his behalf. Her dependence on astrologer Joan Quigley was kept from the public during the Reagan’s years in the White House, not in the least for how fanatically she believed in it, but also because astrology was anathema to Ronald Reagan’s devoted supporters in the Christian evangelical community, many million strong. Mallon does bring back Richard Nixon in this book, now a disgraced ex-President determined to still wield influence in the waning days of the Cold War, going so far as to have a mole planted in the American delegation to Reykjavik. Pamela Harriman comes off as a sort of anti-Nancy, a woman who knew how to marry well and advance herself, now the widow of Averell Harriman and determined to step out and make herself a power in her own right as a Democratic Party fundraiser. I must admit that I liked the fictional Christopher Hitchens (a friend of Mallon’s) in this book much better than the real life one who went off the deep end after 9/11 and supported the invasion of Iraq, while becoming a militant atheist. Among the other real life personages making appearances in the book are Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, Jeanne Kirkpatrick (a darling of neo-cons back in the day), Merv Griffin, Bette Davis, Donald Regan (the tough as nails White House chief of staff who clashed with Nancy); a napping Lillian Gish, George Schultz, Michael Deaver, John Hinckley (who attempted to assassinate Reagan); Bob Dole, Walter and Lee Annenberg, along with a lot of politicians and names from the ‘80s that many readers will have to wiki. I’m surprised there wasn’t an appearance by Sam Donaldson, the abrasive ABC News White House correspondent during the Reagan years, and a frequent foil for the amiable President. Among the fictional characters Mallon invents for his novel is Anne MacMurray, the former wife of a Republican Party power broker (and a money funneler to the Contras) who has become an anti-nuclear activist, an issue that was red hot back in those days, and Anders Little, a lower level member of the National Security Counsel who manages to hitch a ride to Reykivik, and nearly witnesses what might have been the end of the Cold War on one October afternoon but for Reagan’s refusal to abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative. Little is a closeted homosexual in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, working for an administration doing nothing to stem the disease while being supported by a Republican Party not shy about its hostility to anything and anyone suspected of sexual deviancy. Mallon doesn’t hammer the point, but I think he lets his portrayal of the sad fate of Terry Dolan in the book speak for itself. Ronald Reagan is the one character Mallon does not try to get inside, letting the man remain the enigma so many found him to be, a genial front masking a detachment that mystified even those who worked closely with him. The author strongly hints that the Alzheimer’s, which wouldn’t be diagnosed for some years to come, was already lurking in the shadows and peaking out in the last years in the White House.

Mallon is an exceptionally good writer of prose, and gives his story a flow that is easy for the reader to get into, even if one is not too familiar with the politics and personalities of the 1980s. He deftly opens the book on the last day of the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, setting the stage for what would come later, and then doing a time jump to the middle of Reagan’s second term. One thing Mallon does well that is almost impossible for other authors is to switch the character POV multiple times during a scene. This is called “head hopping,” something all beginning authors are warned against doing, but Mallon pulls it off, though I suspect some readers might be thrown by it.

FINALE was published in 2015 just before the Trump era of American politics commenced, and one thing that struck while reading it was just how stark raving sane everyone sounds in this novel compared to the conversations being had in the White House in real life some three decades and change later. So, if you find the political scene of the present day too depressing and you yearn to party like it’s 1986 again, then pick up this book by all means.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Thomas Mallon's novel about Reagan's last years in the presidency shortly after reading H. W. Brands's biography of Ronald Reagan. Mr. Mallon's fictional treatment of President Reagan supports the biography's contention that Mr. Reagan witheld or curtained off his essential self (if there is such a thing) from others. Mr. Mallon portrays the unknowable Ronald Reagan with a novelist's creativity and gives us, as well, a fascinating story about political in Washington in the 1980s. Mr.Malon protrays President Reagan as playing a role--president of the U.S. rabid anti-communist. When not playing this role, Mr. Mallon suggests that the president cannot abide discord--domestic or political--or the suffering of individuals, such as the hostages held in Lebanon. Mr. Mallon fills the rst of his novel with stories of people that captured my imagination, even though they were not central to the main plot. Finale is a good read, even if Mr. Mallon takes us on some unnecessary diversions.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book something of a disappointment. Mallon's portrayals of Nancy Reagan and Nixon bring nothing new to our perception of them. His portrayal of Reagan himself is essentially non-existent--Reagan as an enigma, which is pretty much the public image of him.

Mallon creates a character of Pamela Harriman who, I suspect was less significant within Democratic Party circles circa 1986 than Mallon makes her out to be. She is here primarily as a counterpoint to Nancy Reagan, but the actual encounter between these two near the end of the novel seems less than dramatic. His portrayal of Christopher Hitchens, described in his Afterword as a close friend, is downright annoying.

Mallon does, as usual, create some purely fictional characters with minor roles in the history. The point here seems simply to indicate the existence of a gay Republican underground--interesting but of little consequence to the history presented here.

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

A novel set during the Iceland summit and the beginning of the exposure of Iran-Contra (second half of 1986, mostly). Is quite unsympathetic to Nancy Reagan; is neutral toward Ron (presenting him as distant and hard to understand . . . kind of like this novel). Like many novels it focuses on those on the periphery who happen to cross paths with important people and scenes (these peripherals are both fictional and non-fictional characters). In fact, the book is kind of boring. It's been a while since I was reading a novel just waiting for it to be over. There's not much "there" there when it comes to this novel. I'd much prefer a straight history of the era, methinks.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguingly novel look at a crucial
five months in Bonzo's tumultuous
second term. Defining snippet:
"Did this grinning, infirm film star, himself so entropic
and gaseous, actually keep accruing might and gravity,
a sort of unconscious creativity, from all the cogitation
by the courtiers in his orbit? Did their various hypotheses
about the president's nature somehow supply him
with consequentiality, a kind of super reality - whereas
by himself he lacked any reality at all?"

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book after hearing a radio interview with Thomas Mallon. Since I was born in the 80s and we never got very far past WWII in history class, this novel was both easily accessible history and its own commentary on the times. This was very well written and the cast of characters were compelling. I had to google a lot of casual references, which my friend Maria told me is the sign of good historical fiction!

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember the Reagan years vaguely as I married, began my career and had two children. My impressions then were Ron as a nice bumbling ex actor and his wife as the manipulative power behind the man. This fictionalization of the last term more or less gibes with my memory.
Christopher Hitchens is the hero? That is hard to swallow, but the narrative moves along and entertains.

[Landon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I always thought I was too young to care about the Reagan era when it happened. This book makes me think that it was actually just not that interesting.

[Jayakrishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A consummate political novel, Thomas Mallon’s Finale concentrates on the most eventful year of the Reagan presidency – 1986. A lot was happening, both at home and abroad. The Reykjavík Summit (or pre­-summit?) with Gorbachev ended in a gridlock over “Star Wars.” Republicans lost the Senate; six out seven incumbents whom Reagan campaigned for lost their seats. The Iran­-Contra affair started to unfold. And the President, it seemed, was often disengaged. In a Washington still reeling from the stench of Watergate, the presidency ap­peared to be tanking. Now firmly installed in the pantheon of Republican gods, Ronald Rea­gan was on shaky grounds in 1986. On the line was his legacy. Ever conscious of this fact was the First Lady, Nancy Reagan. She wanted “Ronnie” to be the peacemaker. Possessed of (or by?) celestial truths drawn by her astrologer, Joan Quigley, and fearing for Ronnie's safety and legacy, Nancy constantly agonised. And she was busy waging her own war on drugs. She was persistent when it came to whom her husband should hire and fire; perhaps the first (and hopefully, not the last) time a woman ever came close to calling the shots in the West Wing.

Nancy and Ronald Reagan are but two actors among the ensemble cast of Finale. Pretty much everyone who had something to do with the Reagan ad­ministration makes an appearance or at least gets a shout out. (Given the author's penchant for dispensing historical trivia, I half-expected to see a reference to the longest lasting of Reagan's legacies – the appointment of Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, which took place in the same time window as the novel's main events.) In fact, on a long list of charac­ters running into four pages, only less than a dozen are fictional. Yet, Finale is not an archival vérité. It is perhaps more telling of politics than of political fiction that one could write a gripping novel with only a smattering of fictional characters amidst about a hun­dred real ones. Mallon brilliantly blurs the line between fact and fiction, often prompting, or at least tempting the reader for a quick check on Google.

Chief among the rest of the cast is Richard Nixon, eager to exert (and preserve) what is left of his influence, shooting faxes to the White House, where Anders Little, a (fictional) National Security Council official acts as an intermediary between Nixon and the top brass. Nixon is also more than willing to give the “you-­can­-survive-­anything speech... all that deepest valley/highest mountain stuff” to anyone in need of a pep talk. Far from the profane crook that he is often perceived to be, Mallon's Nixon is funny. He appears almost mellow, tenderly attending to his wife and fondly reminiscing about his former secretary. Finale offers probably the most sympathetic portrayal of Richard Nixon in print.

In the hurly-­burly of Washington affairs, Anders Little is bewildered by a moment of self-discovery himself. When the novel begins we find Little thinking about his two failed marriages and wondering why he couldn’t commit to women, and as we reach the climax, Little himself is amazed by how easily he admits, to a journalist, no less, that his male lover is not sleeping at his place. His personal change might have been rather quick, but through him, Mallon reminds the reader of how little things had changed for Washington insiders, even thirty years after the Lavender Scare. When Little tries to avoid his it’s-complicated lover at the White House Christmas party, he gets chastised: “you should be working someplace where you’re as free to run after him as you’re away from him.” At an even more poignant moment in the novel, as a photographer aboard the Reykjavík­-bound Air Force One clicks a snap, Little's hand reflexively goes to his breast pocket containing an innocuous bon voyage card from his lover. Then there is Terry Dolan – aligning himself with con­servative outfits (including Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority) and championing conserva­tive causes, even as he lay wasted by AIDS. In 1986, President Reagan had yet to acknowledge the ravaging AIDS crisis.

Finale closely follows Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, the ambitious and wealthy wife (and widow as the novel progresses) of the former New York Governer and U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman, as she relentlessly pushes for the success of Democratic candidates in the Senate race, in the hopes of earning herself a preferred ambassadorship. Pamela, “American by choice and Democrat by conviction,” is the most colorful of Mallon's characters.

Wading through the thickets Washington politics, and linking other characters and events is the acerbic Anglo­-American polemicist Christopher Hitchens. He appears just as arresting, if not more, as he had been in real life. Raisa and Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Merv Griffin, Henry Kissinger – all make memorable appearances.

At least since November 9, 2016 it would surprise no one that a once-divorced former Hol­lywood actor could become the President of the United States. But it was no mean feat in the 80s. And Ronald Reagan achieved just that. It is hard to say whether Ronald Reagan was truly the great communicator that he was often deemed to be, the hardball player who won the Cold War, or had always been a mute spectator very much like the old Reagan we see at the end of the novel, uncomprehendingly looking at a chunk of the recently demolished Berlin Wall. Ronald Reagan still remains opaque. In Finale, he baffles even Nancy. History, of course, has been a lot kinder to Ronald Reagan than historical fiction will ever possibly be.

[Frances Supernaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historical fiction 1986,seems a little early to write about this period of President Reagan term in office as fiction. In dealing with only this near end of his term,which includes the Iran Contra scandal and the second Reagan -Gorbachev summit on nuclear weapons, this limits and is diminishing of his presidency. I must admit that the inclusion of the many political members of his administration were very interesting. Then Nancy was fun,along with his children. I was very surprised to see the role that President Nixon played. Having lived through both the Nixon and Reagan administrations I am very aware of how things have changed,then again not so much.

[Robert P. Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mallon's other two books, Landfall and Watergate, were great but this novel exceeds both of them. He presents the historical characters with a richness and depth that I cannot think of other writers achieving. He appears to have sympathy for all the different characters. And his portrayal of both President Reagan and Nancy Reagan is so well done. You see them as flawed human beings but being worthy of respect. His account of how Merv Griffin interacted with Nancy Reagan is so wonderfully done. And the epilogue, an account of President Reagan losing his memory as he struggled with Alzheimer, is moving and the last line of the book is absolutely stunning.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable, although its thesis being how difficult it was to grasp what was at Ronald Reagan's core makes it a touch frustrating. Does a very good job of making you feel the lived experience of the mid-1980s in elite Washington, and as always Mallon makes a strong case for the power of personal quirks and hobby horses as being more of a force of history than grand plans by people who know exactly what they're doing, even if it's not one I accept.

One warning: a substantial part of the book is devoted to two of the main characters from Mallon's earlier work Dewey Defeats Truman. I feel like I would have benefited a lot from rereading it before starting this one.

[Dan Sussman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got halfway through this book and gave up on it as a pointless waste of time. Mallon puts himself into the heads and imagined conversations of the Reagans -- including daughter Maureen -- Richard Nixon, (gulp) Merv Griffin and many others figures of the era, real and imagined. All of this leads up to Reagan's 1986 meeting with Mikael Gorbachev in Iceland. I can't figure out if this book is supposed to be a historic reflection or a tawdry, gossipy page-turner. It's thin, uninteresting gruel at best, and I've got better ways to spend my reading time.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing book about the 1980s with a focus on Ronald Reagan and a cast of characters including Kitty Carlisle Hart, Nancy Reagan, Richard Nixon, Pamela Harriman, John Hinckley, Christopher Hitchens and others; this was my first book by Mallon and the historical detail is stunning! Lots of information about the Iran Contra scandal, references to the attempted assassination of Reagan and juicy political details. This novel gives the reader the feeling of being in the room with these key political figures when history is being made...