The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer

Rating: 5.0

What it's about:

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.

My thoughts:

Imagine: when you are born you come into the world looking like a 70 year old man all wrinkles, loose skin and liver-spotted arms. As you age though, your physical appearance grows more youthful. You get your geriatric body and arthritis over with while you are a child and when you are an old man with all your lifetime of experience, you have a youthful body to enjoy. This is the story of Max Tivoli.

The Confessions of Max Tivoli is narrated by the title character Max. It is Max writing his life story down for his son, the love of his life and future doctors to study. Max was born different, old looking, and stumped the doctors of the time (turn of the century) as to what his disease was. The age that Max looked and the age he actually was always seemed to add up to 70. So when he had lived for 50 years, he had the body and looks of a 20 year old man. This is both a blessing and a curse for Max and through reading his life story we find out why.

The Confessions of Max Tivoli is a love story....but a distinctly unique one. The opening line says "We are each the love of someone's life" and this is true for Max in several heart breaking ways. Alice is the love of Max's life and he meets her at three different stages of his life. The first time is when he is 17 (but looks to be in his 50's) and Alice is 14. He instantly is taken with her but she wants nothing to do with the 'old' man who lives upstairs. Their paths collide later on though when Alice is in her 30's and they fall in love and marry. Before Alice leaves him shortly after, he leaves her a gift that is born 9 months later in the form of Sammy. Max finds out about his son Sammy when he's an old man (but looks like a child) and goes on a search to find Sammy and Alice. Alice takes her ex-husband in as an orphan child and adopts him. So Max, once the husband and father, becomes the son and brother. At the three different times that Max knows Alice, she doesn't recognize him. He is three different people to her and it's heartbreaking to know he can't tell her the truth.

The Confessions of Max Tivoli takes place at the turn of the century San Francisco and incorporates real historical events into the story, for instance the infamous San Francisco Earthquake. The characters are unforgettable and so human. This is an exceptional, strange and beautiful yet heartrending story that I can't wait to read again.