Readers of "Finale," Thomas Mallon's sly and penetrating ninth novel, are well aware that the book's protagonist, the nation's 40th president, is destined to be revered as the Republican Party's patron saint, his very name synonymous with conservative virtue. However, none of the novel's characters know this in real time. "Finale" takes place primarily in 1986, two years after Ronald Reagan's final triumphant campaign and two years before he vacates the White House for good. His presidential legacy is on the line, and the events of 1986 — a fateful nuclear arms meeting in Reykjavik with Mikhail Gorbachev and the brewing Iran-contra scandal — threaten to undo it. The sense of foreboding, bordering at times on panic, that pervades this work of historical fiction stands as an arresting contrast to today's notion of the unassailable Teflon president. Mallon is a poised storyteller who traffics in history's ironic creases. His novels don't upend conventional wisdom so much as remind us that history is a rickety architecture of human endeavor — that today's statues commemorate yesterday's frail and fumbling mortals. Less capable practitioners of historical fiction are often all too eager to demonstrate their archival mastery of the era in question. Mallon's… Read full this story
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