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Summary: My Confessions About Max Tivoli
Review: The Confessions of Max Tivoli, by Andrew Sean Greer, is a book I first heard about one morning on The Today Show. After hearing the intriguing premise of the story, about a man who internally ages like the rest of us while his body does the exact opposite, I just had to read it right away. I had no idea the kind of impact the book would have on me, however.Max, born an infant-sized old man at birth, and growing bigger, but younger, physically as he ages, is an outsider, a misfit, a freak who finds himself never really fitting in. Encouraged at a young age to be who others perceive him to be, he spends most of his life living a lie. I've never had to live a lie, but I know what it's like to be and feel different, having to accept the realization that this state will never change. Max, despite his flaws, is a good man desperately trying to carve out a good life for himself as he spends most of it pining over his one true love, Alice. The story takes place in the late 1800's and early 1900s in the city of San Francisco. Greer does a tremendous job of dropping us into this world from page one and weaves a poetic tale of life, love, and loss that somehow manages blend humor, sadness, and enchantment in a way that will make you never want to put the book down once you pick it up. You'll find yourself loving Max, sympathizing for him, even rooting for him when he finally gets the chance to win over his beloved Alice. And yet, despite the overall tale being a sad and tragic one, you'll never find yourself pitying or hating Max for some of the harsh choices he makes along the way. In fact, if you're anything like me, at times you'll find yourself identifying with this character all too well. And that's truly what great fiction is all about, isn't it?
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Summary: "Be what they think you are."
Review: These words are the Rule given the strange main character by his mother as a means of survival. THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI is surely one of the most beautifully creative and poetic novels in contemporary literature. Author Andrew Sean Greer not only has an imagination for unorthodox characters and tales: he has the gift to write his idiiosyncratic novel in words that surpass prose to become poetry. This is clearly one of the great novels of the 21st century and serves to feed our appetites for more from this artist.
A creative twist to the memoirs of an old man reflecting on his youth as he lays dying, THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI sets that construct in reverse. Born in 1871 to a family of means in San Francisco, Max Tivoli is an aberrant creature, an infant born in the reverse of time, occupying the physical characteristics of an old man, destined to live his life backwards until he dies in 1941 in the form of an infant. In his bizarre life he meets the one woman he will love throughout his span of time on earth, first as a child (to his elderly appearing body) through his first sexual encounter with Alice's mother (more age appearance appropriate), his courtship and marriage and eventual loss of his wandering Alice in the reaction to the great earthquake of San Francisco and her mother's needs in Pasadena. Alice marries multiple times and between marriages has a reunion with Max and conceives a male child. Max Tivoli goes through changes in names as well as changes in physical appearance and follows his beloved Alice across America were as a youth he is ultimately adopted by Alice and lives with his own son Sammy in the form of a smaller brother.
Max's only constant through his life is his childhood friend Hughie who ages normally as Max ages in reverse. It is this tender relationship thqat carries the book through to its tender conclusion. And though some who have not read this miraculous little novel may find this explanation redolent of science fiction or some other incarnation of the tawdry, it is the language of the author that not only carries the tale with care but with some of the most simply perfect writing today. "Death makes children of us all; I learned this in the war." "It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one's life for love." "As for that new identity, Asgar Van Daler. Well, I was no stranger to playing a part that did not belong to me. A father, for instance, my young father standing fresh and smiling in the pleasure gardens of his youth, watching the girls and tossing rye bread to the swans, my Danish father in those happy years before he changed his name. Asgar Van Daler. This inheritance was always mine to claim. After all, I do live life backwards as a saint; like all the beatified, I consider it my duty to restore the world its losses."
Andrew Sean Greer. Watch for this next novel. But in the meantime read this one slowly, like sipping a fine wine. This is treasureable writing. Grady Harp, February 2005
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Summary: heartbreaking, astounding, amazing book
Review: This book is mesmerizing. I found it almost impossible to put down...from the start of Max's life, through the end of the book where he is an old man in the body of a child, I found myself compelled to keep turning the pages, despite the real world demands around me. When I finished the book, and closed the back cover, I found myself clutching the book to my chest and weeping...so incredibly well told is the story. I loved Max, and hated to see his story end. The details of history and the imagery of the setting are evocative and flawless. The plot is smooth and it's termination is both shocking and understandable. To discuss the details of the plot does the writer and future reader a disservice, so well crafted is the blending of the story that to give away the ending to someone who hasn't read the book is almost unforgivable. I can't say enough good things about this book. As American novels go...this may very well be one of the great ones. Months after reading it, I still get emotional about it. I loved this book, and eagerly anticipate reading the rest of Mr. Greer's work.
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Summary: Deadly
Review: This book reeks like old lavender sachet: musty, over-sweet, miasmal in its vagueness. Greer's obsessive images are all of moonlight, fog, dew, star-spangles, voices heard from another room or a distant street: everything that is impalpable, evanescent and indistinct. Those of us who believe that there is a real world and who enjoy the sensation of grasping it may be repelled by the sickly anemia of such writing. Shelley, at least, had wit and urbanity; while Keats had a richly sensuous apprehension of the natural world. Greer has neither: his sentimentality yearns for and purchases nothing but death. His characters are as ill-defined as his prose and uninteresting to boot. The titular hero has no personality: he merely ages backwards and loves the same woman all his life. For Greer, that is all we need to know, but he's wrong: Max is dull. So is Hughie, who has even less individuality; so too is Alice, Max's lifelong love, who is characterized by residual Jewishness, proto-feminism and nothing else. These "people" are as blurry as the sepia-drowned images in a poorly preserved daguerrotype. At key points in the novel characters desert their loving, inoffensive families in order to begin new lives in distant climes. A husband and father vanishes, never to be seen again, leaving his pregnant wife and teenaged son in straitened circumstances. A wife walks out on her adoring and supportive husband without informing him that she is carrying their child, fully intending that he will never find either of them. Of course, these are monstrously cruel and selfish acts; yet neither Greer-Max nor any of the other characters offer a word of reproach. The novel seems to regard these desertions as a justified form of personal truth. Ties of blood, faith and love must be ruthlessly swept aside in favor of the sacred right of self-reinvention. This, too, is a deeply sentimental, profoundly immature view of life; but what else can one expect from an author whose hero grows more and more childish with every passing year?
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Summary: We are Each the love of someones life
Review: This has fast become my favorite book of all time. A spot that normally is held for many years before a new book takes its place. However, not in this case. A few days before I had finished a book I was sure would be in the number one spot for a long time. Then my friend handed me The Confessions of Max Tivoli. By the first line, I was held and could not put it down. I was reading it in all my classes, much to the distain of my teachers. Max Tivoli is a character so great I cannot put it into words. He held my heart with a death grip as I read his heartbreaking story. All the characters, big and small, now hold a place in my heart. I cried for hours after finishing this book, I had stayed home from school just so I could read to the very last page without interruption.
The first line of this book is now my favorite quote; one man questioned it and received a death glare from me. This book proves that we are indeed the love of someone's life and I feel it is one that everyone should read in their life.
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Summary: Best novel of 2004
Review: This is an odd little novel about a man whose body ages down from 70 while his mind develops normally. If all babies look like Winston Churchill, imagine wizened little Max. He has one great love whom he meets when she is 14 and he is 17/53, again when they are both in their 30s, and lastly when he is 10/60 and she is in her 40s.
I can't say enough good things about this book; it's haunting, heartbreaking, humorous, tells a great story of San Francisco from 1880 or so to the mid 1930s, and gives the reader a lot to think about in terms of "what is age" and what is "age-appropriate" behavior! For example, as a fourth grader (who has 60 years of experience and traveled the globe), Max knows that when the teacher asks, "What is the capitol of China?" he needs to say "France" so she leaves him in the back row with the other "dumb" kids and doesn't give him a lot of attention.
A week later, I find myself still thinking about Max, Alice and Hughie.
The Bookschlepper
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Summary: Inspired writing & a captivating story - a wonderful book!!
Review: This is one of the best books I've read in the past few years. The storyline is so intriguing and really gets the reader to think as Max's life unfolds. It's a study on the nature of time & human nature, as well as a love story. I LOVED this book and would recommend it very highly!!
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Summary: The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Review: thought the ny times review was well done, i read the book, enjoyed it, here is a writer to watch...recommended
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Summary: Literate, but ultimately unsatisfactory
Review: While this book is beatifully written, and I thouroughly enjoyed the historical details, I found it ultimately unsatisfactory because the protagonist is too self centered. If he truly loved Alice and his friend, he would have sacrificed for them. As written, he spent his life attempting to satisfy his own desires, regardless of the needs and desires of those he professed to love. If this is the point of the book, then I got it. The result, though , was to make Max unlikable as a character, and the book somewhat disturbing as a whole.
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Summary: Enchanting, but BORing!!!
Review: Yes, the writing is exquisite and enchanting, and I really wanted to "like" this book, but it is a TOTALLY BORing story. I could not and did not want to finish this book. I am referring to the audio CD version. For me, a "good" book is one that makes me want to rush to my car before work/after work/on shopping trips to hear the next installment. Having "Max" in the CD drive, I walked a little more slowly, took fewer shopping trips. This book was a chore to listen to.
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