Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “confessions of Max Tivoli.” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

confessions of Max Tivoli.

Andrew Sean Greer

3.69 · Rating details · 6,830 ratings · 845 reviews

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 tha 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 ...more

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 351 pages

Published 2004 by Leicester

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about confessions of Max Tivoli., please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about confessions of Max Tivoli.

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.69 ·

Rating details

· 6,830 ratings · 845 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of confessions of Max Tivoli.

Jan 09, 2018 Jaidee rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: foolish romantics

Recommended to Jaidee by: a random and welcome choice

Shelves: three-ana-half-stars-books

3.5 "very enjoyable but short of the bullseye" stars !!

I loves me a good melodrama especially when there is a touch of the fantastical or magical realism.

There was so much to adore about this book. A man ages psychologically and intellectually consecutively but physically ages backwards. In the meantime he loves the same woman three times at different stages of his life while staying true to his best friend and sometimes romantic rival. Throw in late nineteenth century San Francisco, circuses, ...more

flag 39 likes · Like · see review

Aug 26, 2018 Fabian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" revamped and reworked in a very satisfying if melancholy way!

This earlier book by Greer--whose "Less" becomes more & more memorable as time passes--likens the aging-in-reverse weeper-of-an-affliction with homosexuality. For there are monstrosities in the human pool--slightly MORE human solely because of their scourge and plight.

The confessionary is self-serving (for good reason!) & an intimate deconstruction of the theme which Oscar Wilde explored at the ti ...more

flag 16 likes · Like · see review

Jan 08, 2014 Mitch Albom added it · review of another edition

This was the real Benjamin Button story, in my view. A beautifully crafted account of a baby born old who gets younger as he ages.

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

Dec 05, 2008 Laurel rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Max Tivoli was born looking like a 70 year old man, with white hair, wrinkled skin and liver spots. Though his mind ages normally, his body grows younger with each passing year.

As I read (or, listened to) this book, I couldn't help but wonder how it compares to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which is essentially (from what I understand) the same story. I've yet to read Benjamin Button, but I would assume that Andrew Sean Greer borrowed heavily from Fitzgerald, even if Max Tivoli was born looking like a 70 year old man, with white hair, wrinkled skin and liver spots. Though his mind ages normally, his body grows younger with each passing year.

As I read (or, listened to) this book, I couldn't help but wonder how it compares to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which is essentially (from what I understand) the same story. I've yet to read Benjamin Button, but I would assume that Andrew Sean Greer borrowed heavily from Fitzgerald, even if only in concept. [Actually, I've since learned that this is not the case; oddly enough, Greer got the idea from a Bob Dylan song].

Anyway, The Confessions of Max Tivoli begins when Max is nearing 60 years old, but looks to be a boy of 10 or 12. Knowing he is in the last years of his life, he decides to write his life story. He does this in part to confess his secrets to the woman he loves, and in part so that his son (who is unaware that Max is his father, since he appears to be a boy of the same age) will someday discover the truth. What follows is a tale of love (sort of), loss and self-reflection.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find Max to be a particularly likable man. Often selfish and full of melancholy over his predicament, he seems to lack any interest in life outside of one single obsession: his love for a girl named Alice.

When Max first meets Alice, she is 14 years old and thinks Max is a man in his 60s, though he is actually only 17 at the time. We are (I think) supposed to feel sorry for Max for what he cannot have, but Max does such a good job at this himself that I found it hard to be as sympathetic as I might otherwise have been.

I also didn't feel that Max's love for Alice was genuine. It seemed more like a destructive, life-long infatuation; a desire for someone simply because that person is out of one's reach. At one point, Max himself says to the reader: "You are thinking this is not love. This sounds like a wretchedly broken heart." Indeed, that is precisely what I was thinking.

For these reasons, I had a hard time getting fully absorbed into the story. I grew so tired of Max's incessant woefulness that I felt myself distancing from him more and more as the story went on.

Despite all this, though, there were some aspects I enjoyed. The book is well-written, with rich prose and a lovely descriptive style.

With my own health struggles, I could definitely relate to the idea of being trapped in a body that doesn't function properly, and all the frustrations that come with that. I think most of us, even when healthy, can relate to the sense that our body rarely matches the age we feel in our mind and soul. I remember when my late grandmother turned 80, she told my mom she didn't feel like she was 80. Time has a way of slipping by more quickly than we want or expect it to, whether it is moving forward, or in Max's case, backwards.

Overall, this was an interesting and well-presented concept, but the characters simply didn't resonate with me as much as I'd hoped. It did make me all the more curious (sorry) to read Benjamin Button, though.

...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Jul 29, 2007 Chris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I read this book years ago and it has remained one of my favorites. I'm still recommending it to people. Much like One Hundred Years of Solitude, it's a moving, sad, and funny story about love. It's hard to imagine (although impossible) what it would be like to age backwards. The levels and types of love displayed in this book are amazing. You won't be able to put it down. ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Jun 09, 2010 Althea Ann rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommended to me by a friend, this is a good book - but not one that really suited my mood this week. It's a melancholy musing on the futility of love.

The narrator, Max Tivoli, was born appearing to be a wizened old man of 70 - and for his entire life, ages backwards, gaining perspective and experience as physically, he becomes younger.

At 17 (when he appears to be an elderly gentleman), he meets the love of his life, Alice. However, she falls in love with Max's best friend, the young and handso ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Sep 14, 2007 Penny rated it it was ok · review of another edition

An interesting concept -- a man is born old and ages backward -- but in the end, I didn't enjoy the book. I came to really dislike the main character, Max. He has a difficult fate, it's true, but he seemed to me to be so consumed with self-pity that he had a hard time relating to anyone else. And he's so very passive -- uninterested in his job or his world. He even sleeps through the San Francisco earthquake! What's the point of placing your novel during the 1906 earthquake if your protagonist s ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Jan 14, 2020 Robin Tobin (On the back porch reading) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, popsugar-2020

My thoughts are still out on this one.
Some parts I liked and made me think.
Other parts didn't sit well and made me shake my head wondering "Why?".....

PopSugar 2020 - Book with a great first line..... "We are each the love of someones life." ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Jan 10, 2009 Carolyn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Andrew Sean Greer's novel took a bit of time to weave its spell for me, but once the spell was cast, I was thoroughly enchanted. Greer conjures up a gorgeous, bustling turn-of-the-20th-century San Francisco, my beloved City, with details so precise and poignant that they will stay with you long after you are done reading. And Max Tivoli, born old and growing ever younger, faces terrible obstacles in love, but then, so do we all. "Be what they think you are," Max Tivoli's parents implore him at t ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Jul 25, 2011 Larry H rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book has been on my shelf for a long time, but I finally picked it up the other day and flew through it. I thought this was great! I agree with some of the other reviewers in that the main character wasn't completely likable, but I found the story really interesting (and even a little heart-breaking). It takes a little while to build up steam, but it's well worth the effort. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Apr 15, 2009 Megan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Megan by: Claire Whitmore

Shelves: fiction, favorites

"We are each the love of someone's life." Greer always has a great opening line. Wonderful, wonderful novel. The idea of aging backwards now makes us think of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", which then makes us think of S. Scott Fitzgerald. But published in 2004, "The Confessions of Max Tivoli" stands completly on its own merit. The whole idea of this book is so imaginative, regardless of where Greer's inspiration came from (a Bob Dylan song actually), he exectuted it beautifully. Greer's ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jun 05, 2020 Kubis Gergő rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5 stars

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 30, 2007 Lillian rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, reviewed

The premise of this book was tantalizing: a man who ages in reverse tries to find and win his one true love time after time. I was hoping it would be akin to The Time Traveler's Wife, whose characters I quickly came to love. The Confessions of Max Tivoli, though, is a completely different beast. For one, I had no idea that it would be narrated in the style of a Victorian novel, complete with frequent exhortations to the "Dear Reader." The prose was lovely, but initially, I found the style a bit ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 18, 2014 Kelly rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: meh, want-those-hours-back, beach-book, fiction, lit, movie-was-better, historical, love, romance

I loved the movie Benjamin Button. I loved Brad Pitt playing Benjamin Button. Not even the idea of visualizing Brad Pitt reading me this book while soaking up some sun with a margarita in hand would make this book any better.

I cannot remember the last time I disliked a character so much all I wanted to do was punch his whole face in. Whiny, selfish and immature, Max Tivoli kind of makes me hate Brad Pitt, and all the man did was play the main character in the adaptation of this book.

And while I ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 23, 2019 Daryl rated it really liked it

This is one of the more finely wrought things I've read in a while. The prose is beautiful (some might say purple, but it really worked for me), the story weird and funny (and sometimes a little creepy) and crushing. I read it quickly but it deserves to be read slowly. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Oct 18, 2020 Mary Blye Kramer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Brilliant. The author easily pulls off the fantasy plot; the story is brilliant, the writing perfect.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 23, 2007 Sara rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: sophisticated, educated readers who are not too jaded to enjoy a tall tale or a meaningful fantasy

This is one of the better books I've read in quite awhile. Part of this is because I haven't been reading much this year, but also this is a beautifully worded book, a delicious slow read with an imaginative premise and poetry and philosophy on nearly every page. It has, however, two unforgivable flaws.

The most glaring unforgivable flaw is the ending, which is frankly unworthy of the rest of the book, in the words of my true love "a cop-out all around." I won't discuss that here (but might on my This is one of the better books I've read in quite awhile. Part of this is because I haven't been reading much this year, but also this is a beautifully worded book, a delicious slow read with an imaginative premise and poetry and philosophy on nearly every page. It has, however, two unforgivable flaws.

The most glaring unforgivable flaw is the ending, which is frankly unworthy of the rest of the book, in the words of my true love "a cop-out all around." I won't discuss that here (but might on my blog in a day or two, if I have time) because it is still a wonderful book, and you should read it if you find yourself with the time and opportunity. I don't want to spoil it for you; there is a mysteriousness to it which is part of the pleasure of just letting it unfold, and despite some questionable narrative conveniences here and there, the real sinking weakness doesn't happen until the last ten pages. At that point there is a choice the author could have made, and it would have been the right choice, the smart, generous, and credible choice, and he talks about it as the character who should have made it, and then he doesn't choose it but instead picks the most melodramatic, least credible, and most heartless finish, and wraps it all up in pretty, impassioned words that I guess are supposed to make it romantic and Supremely Human but instead just make it go on too long.

The other unforgivable flaw is a completely gratuitous episode of animal cruelty which happens on pp. 106-109 of my edition (which says it is the first edition but has a "Today's Book Club" logo worked into the cover design). This is a terrible, terrible scene, and it adds nothing to the book, nothing, especially for the type of reader most likely to enjoy this book, someone already well aware what that time and place were like, but now it is stuck in my head forever. (Oh, thanks.) I highly recommend you bleep over it when you come to it.

It is a credit to the writing of this book that I didn't slam it shut at this point and throw it away. I did read the rest of the book warily, though, and will not automatically reach for another book by this author because inclusion of this scene as well as the insufferably weak choices that the author made at the very end of his own tale lead me not to trust him to tell me a story on which I will be glad to have spent time. I don't regret most of the time spent on this one, though. The wordcraft alone was quite dazzling. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 14, 2019 Alayna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It's hard for me to dislike any book that makes me cry several times or, in this case, for the last 50 pages. The middle of this book did drag a little and the writing was, yes, a little purple at times BUT the last 100 pages were a real feat of structure and storytelling and the writing was especially beautiful.

You know it can't end well considering it's a Benjamin Button-like story, but I was still struck by how sad it became and not just for one single reason but so many frustrating circumsta ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 26, 2009 Judith rated it liked it · review of another edition

I can't decide if I would have like this more or less if I had not seen "Benjamin Buttons". I am not sure why the movie purports to be based on a short story by Gatsby because this book seems too much like the movie to be coincidence. Regardless, it is more interesting in some ways because the love story is so much more complicated and the setting is San Francisco, rather than the whole world. The psychological aspects of aging backwards are explored in much greater detail through this narrative ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 18, 2018 Molli B. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-before-goodreads, 2018-shelved

I read this way back when it was new, and I barely remember anything other than that I really enjoyed it. If I ever unearth my copy, I'll reread it. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

May 19, 2008 J rated it liked it · review of another edition

It is a delicate task to write a book in which the main character repeatedly ruins the life of and frightens almost to death another major character and to make that protagonist sympathetic. You understand why he does what he does, you see how he fools himself into believing the consequences of his actions will not be bad as they truly unfold to be, and you watch with great empathy for both him and his victim. It is a balancing act to show such obsessive love as Andrew Sean Greer does in The Con It is a delicate task to write a book in which the main character repeatedly ruins the life of and frightens almost to death another major character and to make that protagonist sympathetic. You understand why he does what he does, you see how he fools himself into believing the consequences of his actions will not be bad as they truly unfold to be, and you watch with great empathy for both him and his victim. It is a balancing act to show such obsessive love as Andrew Sean Greer does in The Confessions of Max Tivoli while not shirking from the end results of such love.

Let me just also add that this demanding balancing act also has to exist within the confines of an entire book built around a peculiar fantastical device. Like something quite similar to the joke conceit of the Jonathan Winters character Mearth from 70s sitcom, Mork & Mindy, the titular protagonist is born a shriveled, decrepit old man who grows physically younger as he ages chronologically. We are spared the considerations of scale in the actual birthing process by the oddity of Max being infant-sized then rapidly growing into the size and shape and appearance of a 70 year old man. Seventy is indeed the magical number, Max’s apparent age always 70 minus his chronological age. Thus the book opens with what appears to be a twelve year old writing down his experiences over the last 58 years.

Starting from his birth in 1871, Max’s experiences also manage to form some rather fine historical set-piece writing by Greer filled with a sort of filigreed detailing, small touches here and there like a man’s vulcanized rubber tooth fillings, a beetle attached to a minuscule gold chain worn as a leashed pendant, whorehouse tricks with latch keys. And so we have here on our hands what amounts to a romanticized fantasy historical novel about the corrosive effects of obsessive love wrapped up in a morbid reflection on one’s own ever present mortality. Did I mention this is only Greer’s second novel?

While the course of the story sometimes veers into sentimentality, it never feels terribly mawkish or absurd, more an outgrowth out of a certain type of young man who grew up in a certain time and place. Greer directs him right into the kind of trouble a seventeen year old would get up to, falling in love with a girl a little younger, then stirs up the tensions with the fact of Max’s fifty year looks. Alice, the object of his affection, we get to watch grow up the normal fashion, as Max’s desperate pursuit of her, her inability to believe his tale, and his dying quest to end his life with her, slowly warp and twist her life into a thing of hidden bitterness.

Originally falling in love with Alice when she is the fourteen year old daughter of his family’s tenant, Max kisses her one night after her heart is broken by another boy. This leads to her mother packing up all their belongings and moving away, disappearing into the turn of the century, escaping the apparent child molester. When he refinds Alice, it is a charming moment, Max given a second chance at love in a strange new way. Greer knows how to sweetly slide the blade in. “This sounds like a wretchedly broken heart, you’re thinking; this sounds like revenge.” When they both confess to each other the story of their first kisses, meaning each other years ago, it is a fanciful dance of perspective, hers filling in the other half of the story, his avoiding it. Max should learn from this a lesson his entire life should have prepared him for: your perspective is not reality.

Indeed, it is Max’s inability to see past his own specific wants and desires that is the novel’s weakest element. Max ought to know better than anyone that perception can radically depart from reality and he ought to better understand Alice’s reaction to the old him of years ago and how he cast a shadow over her present life with him. That he remains so trapped in his own ideas can’t be excused by his — what shall we call it? — temporal condition because his entire life is lived according to the precept his parents instilled in him “Be what they think you are.” At one point he muses, “What do we abandon to claim our heart’s desire? What do we become?” but the question is rather moot as he never does this, even in the face of Alice’s horror.

I had, while listening, a great sense at the book’s beginning that the author wanted to write a deep, intellectual book with a fantastical conceit, wanted to show us the real world, the simpler, more profound world under all our nonsense, but it didn’t seem at first as if Greer were really capable of writing that kind of book. As things moved along, the book started to work on me, yet there remained a nagging feeling that this wasn’t smart enough, nor clever enough, not sensitive or wise enough to pierce the skin of existence quite as deeply as he wanted. I was won over to the book after some initial struggle, but that tense feeling remained until I read through many of the quotes I took from the novel, until I had time away from the actual reading of it.

And that was when it struck me how instrumental a reader can be to one’s judgment of a novel, and how correct my wife was in insisting that part of what made listening to an audiobook fundamentally different from reading it was the interpretive spin a reader brought to the words. Keeler has a saccharine voice on the high end of the register, a pleasant tootling little trumpet better suited to mystery novels wherein cats solve crimes and smoke meerschaums while dressed in feline model deerstalkers.

This story is a sad one, melancholy, bitter even, yet Keeler reads as though he were narrating one of those sweeter Hallmark Presents coming-of-age made-for-TV movies. Lines like “We all hate what we become,” referring to the self loathing that comes over us as we age, is not a sticky line of plucked heart strings, but the reader sounds like a well-coifed, friendly uncle telling you a charming tale of sleeping princesses. “The body, that pale spider, stuns the mind” is another fine phrase made a bit treacley by the narration. Occasionally, he can work his voice up to a sneering emotion, such as the elderly Max’s irritation at having to pretend to be a boy and learn the times tables, but this edge is missing throughout when it is most necessary.

It is for this reason that I have pledged to revisit this novel some months from now, long after the effects of a particularly cloying reading have vanished, long after the taint may have subsided, when I can return to Max Tivoli once more. I plan to dilute the effect prior to this by tracking down Greer’s other works, his debut novel, The Path of Minor Planets as well as his short story collection, How It Was for Me. It is clear from his abilities here that Greer writes with an uncommonly confident style. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jul 16, 2019 Linda rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 04, 2018 Erika Miller rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This wasn't terrible, but the main character was far too self-centered for my liking. His "confessions" droned on, and revealed a highly unlikeable person. We should be striving for something more in our lives than seeking to arrange the universe as we see fit. Max thought only of himself throughout his life...strange and difficult as it was and managed to use up anyone he got close too. This made the story difficult for me to get through. At best, we can take Max's oft quoted wisdom, "We are ea ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Dec 16, 2013 Ron Charles rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Social scientist Margaret Gullette has published a book called "Aged by Culture," which argues that elderly attitudes prescribe the course of physical decline more than our chromosomes do (reviewed Jan. 13). I was particularly interested because my graduating class is gearing up for a landmark college reunion amid the usual mutterings about who looks great and who is "showing a lot of courage." My own anxieties in that department weren't quelled when my daughter reassured me that I'm not old, I' ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 09, 2019 Ann Goldman rated it liked it · review of another edition

Max is a creep. Of course, he's a creep. How could you not be a creep when you're a 17-year-old inside a 60-year-old man's body? Or vice versa. But, it's hard to sympathize with a creep.

Ultimately, it's a tragic story. Well written, but I didn't like any of the characters, so it fell a little flat for me.

...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 03, 2020 Andrada Miere rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I ordered this book at the beginning of the pandemic because someone recommended it and I only wish they’d have done it sooner. I started it yesterday and could hardly put it down. I finished it in less than a day, while somehow also managing to work and sleep, it was that enthralling!

I cried, and laughed, and cried some more, it was heartbreaking but heartwarming at the same time. The book is narrated from the perspective of one character, but somehow every single character in it is fleshed ou ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Dec 22, 2020 Patrick Burns rated it really liked it · review of another edition

After finishing Greer's novel LESS, I wanted to dive into his other works. This book was the highest recommended though I admit I was wary when I saw that it was about a man aging backwards (born old, becoming younger and younger). I'm not a huge fan of a gimmick (I've been told my art would be better if I would embrace it more).

However, this book is incredibly beautiful. Set in San Francisco at the turn of the last century, the settings are so vivid and I felt like I was time traveling. I love ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 21, 2018 Steve Tetreault rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, historical-fiction, weird

I have to start keeping better track of which sources are recommending books to me so I can figure out which one of my sources keeps hitting sour notes...

The central premise of the book, that the protagonist's body is aging in reverse after he is born looking like an old man, seems like it could be interesting. But while that central oddity drives the main action of the book and is a constant source of motivation for the plot, it's almost treated like a background element. It is not explored in I have to start keeping better track of which sources are recommending books to me so I can figure out which one of my sources keeps hitting sour notes...

The central premise of the book, that the protagonist's body is aging in reverse after he is born looking like an old man, seems like it could be interesting. But while that central oddity drives the main action of the book and is a constant source of motivation for the plot, it's almost treated like a background element. It is not explored in any particular way beyond, "How might someone's life go if they were the only one living this way?" So if follows literally the entire life of this character, skipping like a stone across decades, with pauses here and there to dip into the effects this has on the character's life.

And overall, Max Tivoli's life is extremely bleak. It's somewhat interesting at first to see how a young person in an old body might get along. But the character himself is the first-person narrator the book, in the guise of a written "confession", and his internal monologue is not particularly insightful. He labels himself a monster early on, and it seems he is talking about his condition, but by the end, he is talking about his personality, which is not pleasant. But Max is not monstrous or unpleasant in the way of the horror movie monster, giving a thrill by being so awful; instead, he's monstrous in a pedestrian, everyday way that is just painful to have to witness. His monstrousness is his selfishness, which becomes more acute as the story spins along, and yet which is never acknowledged by the narrator himself.

This might all be bearable if Max was the only central character; but he is just one among a cast of selfish actors in this play of misery. As if that wasn't enough, they're mostly rich and white and living lives at a remove from any hardship that might help give them character. Which perhaps is supposed to be the point? Except that is never really addressed anywhere, and even when characters' circumstances change, they don't particularly. So maybe the point is that we are all selfish?

Honestly, I was near to putting this book down unfinished half a dozen times, none more acutely than at the three-quarters mark, when I decided to just grit my teeth and push through to just be done with it, in the hope that there might be some redemption of the story; but it turned out my instincts were spot-on, and I should have stopped.

Make no mistake, this book is a tragedy. It ends on quite a downer for all involved. And if you're looking for a sad story, this might be right up your alley. And perhaps if I'd come across it at some other point, I would have enjoyed it more. I found some of the ideas that were set up to be thought-provoking. How long would it take at different stages of life for people around you to notice that you were not aging normally? How would you deal with such a condition? Would it be a blessing or a curse? How much would the physical affect one's thoughts, feelings, and personality?

Despite the interesting thought experiments engendered by the premise of the book, I was not a huge fan. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 19, 2008 Claire rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: people who like romances

Shelves: wee-bit-overrated, romance

It's now been twenty-one hours since I finished this book, and my afterthoughts have definitely fluctuated since then. However, I think three stars is still a reasonable rating for Max Tivoli. As a solid character alone, though, that rating would be too generous.

I think I've come to my own conclusion that I'm much harsher on romance stories than any other genre of books. Rarely have I come upon one that has knocked me off my feet (The English Patient in particular), but I can't imagine that sto ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 08, 2011 Ryan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fic-speculative, fic-literary

***1/2

You might be surprised that this book preceded the move "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", which was made after I read it (in 2008), and that the two works are unconnected. Except, of course, for the central plot idea, which Greer might have also borrowed from F. Scott Fitzgerald: a child is born in an old man's body and from there ages backwards.

Despite the sci-fi premise, the story is lyrical and character-focused. Greer, admirably, doesn't give Max any easy outs from his situation o ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
What's the Name o...: SOLVED. Benjamin Button -- man ages backward? [s]	4	819	Oct 31, 2020 02:31PM
Missing earthquake piece from my memory...	1	3	Nov 25, 2018 08:25PM
Like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"?	18	519	Oct 14, 2011 08:06PM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Fiction

270 users

Fantasy

80 users

Historical > Historical Fiction

55 users

Magical Realism

25 users

Novels

22 users

Romance

21 users

Historical

13 users

Literary Fiction

12 users

Book Club

12 users

Adult Fiction

12 users

See top shelves…

About Andrew Sean Greer

Andrew Sean Greer

1,819 followers

Andrew Sean Greer (born 1970) is an American novelist and short story writer.

He is the bestselling author of The Story of a Marriage, which The New York Times has called an “inspired, lyrical novel,” and The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was named one of the best books of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle and received a California Book Award.

The child of two scientists, Greer studied writing ...more

Books by Andrew Sean Greer

More…

Goodreads Members Suggest: 32 ‘Vacation’ Reads

As this strange summer of staying put winds down, one thing remains truer than ever: Books offer us endless adventure and new horizons to...

Trivia About The Confessions o...

6 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from The Confessions O...

“We are each the love of someone's life.” — 57 likes

“People always say the greatest love story in the world is Romeo and Juliet. I don't know. At fourteen, at seventeen, I remember, it takes over your whole life." Alice was worked up now, her face flushed and alive, her hands cutting through the night-blooming air. "You think about nobody, nothing else, you don't eat or sleep, you just think about this . . . it's overwhelming. I know, I remember. But is it love? Like how you have cheap brandy when you're young and you think it's marvelous, just so elegant, and you don't know, you don't know anything . . . because, you've never tasted anything better. You're fourteen."

It was no time for lying. "I think it's love"

You do?"

I think maybe it's the only true love."

She was about to say something, and stopped herself. I'd surprised her, I suppose. "How sad if you're right," she said, closing her eyes for a moment. "Because we never end up with them. How sad and stupid if that's how it works.” — 29 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — confessions of Max Tivoli. by Andrew Sean Greer

confessions of Max Tivoli.

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Andrew Sean Greer

Books by Andrew Sean Greer

Related Articles

Trivia About The Confessions o...

Quotes from The Confessions O...

See a Problem?

Preview — confessions of Max Tivoli. by Andrew Sean Greer

confessions of Max Tivoli.

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Andrew Sean Greer

Books by Andrew Sean Greer

Related Articles

Trivia About The Confessions o...

Quotes from The Confessions O...

new topic
Discuss This Book