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Title: The Confessions of Max Tivoli (Today Show Book Club #22) |
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Review of The Confessions of Max Tivoli (Today Show Book Club #22)
- Today Show Book Club Pick
An extraordinarily haunting love story told in the voice of a man who appears to age backwards
We are each the love of someone's life.
So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no other. At his birth, Max's father declares him a "nisse," a creature of Danish myth, as his baby son has the external physical appearance of an old, dying creature. Max grows older like any child, but his physical age appears to go backward--on the outside a very old man, but inside still a fearful child.
The story is told in three acts. First, young Max falls in love with a neighborhood girl, Alice, who ages as normally as any of us. Max, of course, does not; as a young man, he has an older man's body. But his curse is also his blessing: as he gets older, his body grows younger, so each successive time he finds his Alice, she does not recognize him. She takes him for a stranger, and Max is given another chance at love.
Set against the historical backdrop of San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century, Max's life and confessions question the very nature of time, of appearance and reality, and of love itself. A beautiful and daring feat of the imagination, The Confessions of Max Tivoli reveals the world through the eyes of a "monster," a being who confounds the very certainties by which we live and in doing so embodies in extremis what it means to be human.
Product Description
- Out of the womb in 1871, Max Tivoli looked to all the world like a tiny 70-year-old man. But inside the aged body was an infant. Victim of a rare disease, Max grows physically younger as his mind matures. In Andrew Sean Greer's finely crafted novel, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Max narrates his life story from the vantage point of his late fifties, though his body is that of a 12-year-old boy. He has known since a young age that he is destined to die at 70, and he wears a golden "1941" as a constant reminder of the year he will finally perish in an infant form. His mother, a Carolina belle concerned over her son's troubling appearance, curses Max with "The Rule": "Be what they think you are." Max fails to keep this Rule only a handful of times in his life, but it is the burden of living by it that wounds him and slowly alienates him from the people he loves.
Over Max's narration of the preceding decades of his life, he offers outsider's snapshots of San Francisco and all of America across the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Throughout, Greer uses the literary device of reverse aging to interrogate the evolution of social conventions, the finitude of a human life, and the decay of memory. Max wants love. But his curse destines him to deception. He loses his wife, Alice, changes his name, and remains hidden from his own son to keep his true identity secret. Only his lifelong friend, Hughie, stands by Max and can see the person inside the anachronistic body. Like the best science fiction and myth, the novel uses its central conceit to reveal human prejudice and explode all assumptions of normalcy to profound effect.
Love is a destructive force in The Confessions of Max Tivoli. But Greer recognizes that in the failure of love is also hope. He artfully captures Max's fragile world with a delicacy that never crosses into sentimentality but also avoids the monumental scale of tragedy. As Max says near the end of the novel, "It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing to waste ones life for love." A journey with Max, while brave and beautiful, is hardly a waste. --Patrick O'Kelley
Amazon.com
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Comments for The Confessions of Max Tivoli (Today Show Book Club #22)
- Posted on 2008-06-29
Great story well told
This is one of my favorite books. Greer is a gifted writer whose descriptions are mesmerizing. Growing from old to young is a wonderful notion, and in Greer's hands, it is believable. This is a story of love, friendship, self-discovery, and wonder. Friends to whom I've given this book enjoyed it as much as I did.
Score: 5
- Posted on 2008-04-14
engrossing
this is a fast, engaging read. The premise is interesting and has loads of implications; too bad they weren't fully pursued. The ending was a bit nihilistic - another ending could have engaged the premise more fully...
Score: 3
- Posted on 2008-04-12
Missing the feeling . . .
While this book was well written, and I love quirky novels, something was really missing for me. The characters were not well-developed and were not particularly likeable, with the possible exception of Hughie.
Max could have been quite an endearing sort, but he just wasn't. In the beginning of the story, I imagined him smelling of sweat and cigars. Even in his youth, he wasn't compelling or sweet. I just could not shed any tears for Max or even care. This, after reading another novel, The Book Thief, which really [...] me in and had a huge cast of memorable characters. While Max was easily readable, I just didn't care about either him or Alice. Oh,well.
Score: 3 - Posted on 2008-02-28
Beautiful, compelling, and disturbing all at the same time
First, let me say that to all the people who disliked this novel, I can see where you're coming from. The subject matter is controversial, disturbing, and sometimes downright wrong, but ultimately, that is not what this book is about. This book is not about Max, nor is it about his love for Alice, nor is it about his difficulties with being accepted into society. At it's simplest level, this book is about love, devotion, and the ties that bind. This book is about this powerful emotion called love that is able to surpass even time.
Max is such a deeply flawed and broken character that I almost want to hate him. I almost want to despise him and disgust the things he does. But in spite of his obsessive love for Alice and his selfishness that causes him to push away his truest friend, Hughie, I still found myself, more often than not, rooting for Max to get a happy ending.
This book made me cry on two separate accounts, both of which I will not detail as it would spoil the novel. It is one of the few books that I have read in my lifetime that has left me with an empty feeling upon completion. I feel such a myriad of emotions: nostalgia, sorrow, understanding, acceptance. Mostly, I can't quite believe this journey is over.
This book is beautifully narrated, carefully crafted, and is overall a true gem of a novel.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-01-10
Confession is a such a strong word...
I could not get past the absolute absurdity of the basic premise of this book - a seventy year old newborn whose body grows younger as he ages. If he were a seventy year old man when born, how could he fit inside his mother? Oh, I see... He was a miniature old dude who grew big and young looking and then shrank again. Please!
In spite of the author's grandiose prose, this is the story of a creep named Max. The endless descriptions of his incomprehensble love for a totally uninteresting woman left me cold. At no point did Max seem likable; his beloved was a bore; his good friend Hughie was simply a tool for both the writer and Max. I simply disliked and despised the main character.
Finally, the most distasteful part of this book is the selfish, cruel, almost amoral character of Max who weasels and lies his way through life. He is a complete coward, emotionally and morally. Flowery prose doesn't alter the fact that Max's heart and mind are deserts.
I cannot recommend this book.
Score: 3