supergee: (book)
Arthur D. Hlavaty ([personal profile] supergee) wrote2015-11-03 07:12 pm

Fic

I must admit that I like Real People Fic. I appreciate Guy Gavriel Kay’s argument about respecting the privacy of those who’ve gone even centuries before, but I wallow in scabrous imaginings about the unlibelable dead. James Ellroy’s American Tabloid is a particular fave. (Come to think of it I’d favor a Koch/cruz D/s, though I wouldn’t actually read it.)

A few years ago Thomas Mallon wrote a book with the irresistible title of Watergate: A Novel, which it lived up to. With a few truly fictional characters and some inspired conjectures about nonfictional ones, he told a delightful tale. He even managed to make Pat Nixon interesting.

Now he’s back, with Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years, and he’s done it again. A fine selection of viewpoint characters, including the deposed Nixon, the promising young journalist Christopher Hitchens, and the First Lady’s astrologer (in fulfillment of the prophecy in Stranger in a Strange Land), tell us a fascinating story.

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