Historical fiction can be an imaginative way of exploring great historical characters and bringing events to life beyond the documentary evidence and witness accounts. You might have thought writers would hesitate to approach Ronald Reagan and his times through fiction after the disaster of his official biographer Edmund Morris’s inserting himself as a semi-fictional character in his misbegotten Dutch (1999), but fortunately Thomas Mallon’s invented characters in his new novel of the Reagan era don’t include himself (though one suspects that more than one is a composite of real people).
Finale follows other Mallon historical titles, such as Dewey Defeats Truman (1997) and Watergate: A Novel (2012), that sparkle not for offering any bold new interpretation of events but for capturing the texture of the times with a dry wit and a keen eye for subtle insights. The charms of Finale grow slowly on the reader, as Mallon’s feel for this most extraordinary and unusual presidency of the 20th century can’t help but leave us nostalgic once again for the time of the Gipper. It was extraordinary for the events that took place — especially the key turning point of the end of the Cold War — and also the Hollywood element of Reagan himself, which is ever present but not overdone in Mallon’s treatment.
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