At first I thought Benjiman Button has already been done and here is another about a man born old who grows young. But this is an entirely different and more tragic take. I enjoyed the placement of the turn of the century which helps give it an evocative, almost haunting appeal. ( )

This was a GREAT book. I read it before Time Traveler's Wife and found it confusing at first, but once you open your mind and don't ask a lot of questions, it's a GREAT story!

Boy born in old man's body and ages into a 12 year olds body when he kills himself. Obssessively in love with Alice and spends his life trying to be in her life without her knowing who he is. Everybody is the love of someone's life. Huey, Max and Alice. ( )

It has a very interesting premise. It is well-written. It keeps you turning the pages to find out how it will end...

Did I mention it has a very interesting premise?

But... it lacks a connection to the reader. There is little feeling/sympathy generated for Max. It's an interesting "study" of a very odd "disease" from an outsiders look in, but... Max himself is uninteresting and un-engaging, making the book feel like a non-fiction.

Not that this makes it bad, just that it doesn't end up being as good as I had hoped. ( )

Ages backward like Benjamin Button. ( )

Compelling storyline, fluid and unique style, interesting premise. ( )

Max Tivoli has a unique problem. He was born as a 70 year old infant who shortly grew into the body of a 70 year old man with the mind of an infant. His chronology was reversed his entire life except for one brief period of time when his age and his appearance came together. This is an unusual premise I thought posed all kinds of interesting situations for an author to resolve. Unfortunately, Andrew Sean Greer chose to focus on one particular element in Max's life, and he made it an obsession.

Max first meets Alice Levy when she is 14 years old; mentally he is close to the same age. However, Max looks like a man in his 60's, so it is inappropriate for a man with his appearance to be pursuing a young girl with any kind of serious intentions. Yet Max has serious intentions. He deeply loves Alice and wants to spend his life with her. This is impossible for him at the time in which they meet.

The rest of Max's story is about his obsession with Alice and how it affects everything else in his life. With that in mind, the author skips over or minimizes details that should have some priority in Max's life. For instance: Max has the same job for 20 years, yet no one with whom he works ever notices that while they're growing older, Max is getting younger? He might be able to carry that off for a few years, but it's odd that his co-workers didn't question that the 50-something year old man who was hired for the job became a 30-something hunk.

There were times reading about Max became very tedious. He's so self-involved to the exclusion of everything else that he becomes less and less sympathetic as the story progresses. The convenience with which problems seem to miraculously melt away from him stretches credibility entirely too far.

Max's story begins with the words We are each the love of someone's life." Eliminate all the flaws in this book, and what Green has written is the tragic confession of a man who, through no fault of his own, was dealt a terrible hand at birth. The way his circumstances impact the lives of those around him make this book worth reading. ( )

So, I didn’t feel quite that strongly about Max, but I did return it to the library as soon as I was finished, and I did thank the book gods that I hadn't bought it. I was so anxious to be done with this book that I forgot to keep it around long enough for reviewing purposes, so I have no quotes or passages to back up anything I say. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

I was so ready to love this book. It had a super interesting premise and it was well-written. A male child is born to a couple and has the face and body of an old man. Now, I understand that certain books require a suspension of disbelief, and I’m okay with that as long as authors follow their own rules. Max Tivoli is born infant sized. There is no description of his mother being torn apart while trying to, literally, birth a man-child, yet later on in the book we are lead to believe that Max appears as an adult (when he is a child) and will shrink in height and physically grow younger until he turns into an infant- which seems to contradict him being born an infant. He starts off as a child appearing to be about 70 years old.

We are told that from the very beginning that Max's mother has advised him to act the age that he appears to be as opposed to the age his is, but I don't feel that we ever got any insight as how he goes about doing that or how such deception makes him feel. There are so many interesting places that this book should have lead. How does it feel to grow up with the face of an old man? How does it feel as a child to be forced to interact with people older than you? How does it feel to be physically old when you should be want to run around and play? How does it affect your interactions with your family and people who know your family; people in general? There were so many interesting questions that I would have liked to have just a glimmer of in the narration. Nope. The character is totally isolated and doesn’t make friends or try to interact with anyone besides Hughie, Alice and Madame Dupont - a brothel owner who used to be a maid in his house.

I think Greer was trying to build this great love story where we watch Max get his shot at love three times over a lifetime, as he appears to his love, Alice, as three different versions of himself. The main problem with this is the character of Max Tivoli. The novel collapses under the weight of a completely self centered and uninteresting narrator. It’s never clear why he loves Alice so much, and so his great love always seems like a juvenile crush that he hasn’t had the opportunity to mature into the depths of love that man might feel. Max is also too self-centered to give any of the other characters more than cursory consideration so we don’t get to know or understand them. I found the character of Hughie to be intriguing from the little I could glean from Max’s spare treatment of him, and he appears to be tormented by a secret, but Max doesn’t ever think to ask his best friend what is bothering him, and by the time Hughie’s secret is revealed it’s anti-climactic and to me, implausible.

Greer is a talented writer. He knows his way around a sentence and his descriptive abilities are very good, but the character of Max failed to move me, which is the kiss of death for any character and also kills the book when that character is the one telling the story. I was bored. This would have been helped had the narrative more fully addressed the realities and limitations/benefits of Max’s unique existence, but as a character he always fails to engage. He even meets someone he suspects is like him, and he doesn’t even talk to the person! Greer is a good writer, so I would be curious to read something else of his, but knowing what I know about Max Tivoli I would be quicker to jump ship if his next main character didn’t engage me rather quickly. ( )

The premise of this novel is a bit weird but Greer's writing makes it worth reading. Some passages are beautiful and heartbreaking. ( )

Max Tivoli is a man whose body ages backwards -- he is born looking 70 and slowly advances toward childhood. He shares his secret with precious few and instead tries to follow The Rule: Be what they think you are. Thus, as a teenager, he passes for a middle-aged man, and as an old man acts as a boy. The story was reasonably well done and it was easy enough to suspend disbelief while listening. Nonetheless, I never came to love Max as a character, nor did I love Alice, the love of Max's life. The book might have interested me more if it explored Max telling Alice (or others) about his condition rather than maintaining his secret. The reader for the audio version does an excellent job. ( )

http://bookcrossing.com/journal/22885... ( )

Although our library copy has a Sci-Fi sticker on the spine, this is sci-fi like The Time Traveler’s Wife is sci-fi – not really. Yes, Max is living his internal life backward while in a body that goes through the normal physical stages, but really it’s about love – or obsessive love. When Max first sees Alice, his downstairs lodger, it’s love at first sight. All would be fine except that with his condition, while he may feel seventeen inside, he looks 50-something on the outside – hardly the great attractor to Alice at fourteen. The book follows Max’s trials through life as he pursues Alice in his many “disguises.” Greer doesn’t pretend that Max’s obsession is all for the good. There definitely is an element of selfishness in Max – he has hurt people. Ultimately the book is really about how we always seem to love the person we can’t have. Alice has loved Max’s closet gay friend Hughie (it’s the late 1800’s when the love story begins), Hughie has pined for Max, albeit in a quiet and non-demonstrative way, and, of course, Max is obsessed with Alice. Greer is pretty magical with words as well as story line. ( )

On Wednesday, September 5th of this year, I was reading my “Books—A-Million, Page-A-Day, Book Lover’s Calendar,” and I read the entry for this book. It sounded like an interesting premise – a man is born in 1871 at the age of 70 years old. As his body grows, his age declines. Of course, the blurb by John Updike didn’t hurt one bit. I bought the book, and finally got around to reading it this weekend. At first, I was confused. The narrator (of the title) kept referring to different ages, and I was unsure where we were in time. I almost gave up, but I kept at it, and I am glad I did. Updike was right, it is an “enchanting” story of love lost, found, lost, and found again. Greer has a penchant for embedding literary references in his story. The first time I saw one, I “harrumphed” at the obvious borrowing, but then I began to look for more little nuggets buried in the brain of a 60/10 year-old man/boy. For example, he writes, “Reader, she married me” and “the creature had to stay in the attic” as homages to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. We also have a “Gordian knot” and a reverse of Scarlet O’Hara when Alice redecorates the bedrooms “from old dress material.” The novel deserves another read to search for more references. Max Tivoli was, at times confusing, but it all becomes clear in the end. A sad story, but one told with a strange sense of humor, and I could not help but feel sorry for Max. If you have ever loved and lost, you will enjoy this book. It has a decided 19th century feel to it. Four stars. --Jim, 12/4/2007 ( )

based on a true story of a man who was born old and grew younger. ( )

This was a book club selection. It's at the bottom of my list. ( )

There is plenty to think about in The Confessions of Max Tivoli, in a book that could have ammounted to little more than a conceit.

(Read more at Fourth-Rate Reader.) ( )

I enjoyed this book well enough, but I had high hopes going into it that weren't quite lived up to. It was recommended based on Kavalier & Clay, History of Love, and Everything is Illuminated, all of which I loved, so perhaps that explains the mindset with which I bought this book. And I can see how the comparisons are drawn, but this book was just not quite up to the standard set by those others. It takes a very interesting idea - Max Tivoli was born as a 70-year-old, and his body ages backward while his mind and soul ages forward - and manages to make it kind of mundane. The book is exclusively concerned with his lifelong love for Alice, and his three distinct periods of trying to win her love. I didn't really connect with Max or empathize with him, and the repeated protestations of love got a little old (yes, we get it, Alice is the love of your life). The events were laid out with not a whole lot of connection to anything, no real overarching theme that you didn't have to dig for yourself. What could have been the book's theme - "It is a terrible and a beautiful thing to waste one's life for love" - blew past in the final pages without anything from the rest of the story making us really see the terror or the beauty. Similarly, a fair bit of time was spent on the time period and setting (turn-of-the-century San Francisco), but there never seemed to be any motivation for giving it such a specific grounding; it was just more details that didn't have any real resonance with the story or the reader. Finally, what was apparently supposed to be the big "reveals" at the end of sections 1 and 2 were telegraphed from the beginning, which made the secretiveness and obtuse phrasing seem pretty disingenuous. I can't rate this book too badly, because it's a fascinating idea, a pretty good if not mind-blowing story, and some nice if not jaw-dropping use of language, but I think it suffered by comparison to the very books that recommended it. ( )

http://www.fascinationplace.org/2007/... ( )

Remember reading the Phantom Tollbooth, & it told of the country where people grew younger as they got older? This is a tale taken from that idea.
Max Trivoli's unhappy passion in life is that he never seems to be (or appear to be) the right age for the woman he loves. ( )

Oh my! This has to have been one of the most gut-wrenching and heartbreaking stories I've read in a long time. The author's prose style is absolutely exquisite, and by the end of the book, don't be surprised if you're reaching for a tissue. I don't think I'll leave this one behind mentally for some time. Very highly recommended.

The premise of the book (which, if I had to classify it in a genre, I don't know if I could do so -- maybe along the lines of "fanstastical" if that's any help) is that when the main character, Max Tivoli, was born, he was born with the physical traits of an old man and as he aged chronologically, he became younger. So that when he was 14, he looked like he was in his late 50s, and then steadily grew younger looking as he got older. Max's story begins with his birth, then takes us through childhood, his teens, middle age, and then his last years. It is the story of Max finding and losing the love of his life, not once, but three times. Each time he finds her, he is a different person to her, because of course, he changes backwards in time; each time he finds her, the relationship changes. It is his overwhelming love for this woman that transcends his own condition here -- and it is this that really is the main thrust of the story.

An absolutely delightful and thought-provoking novel; it hit me right in the gut. To be honest, there isn't that much fiction over my lifespan that has left me with this kind of reaction; when it does, I consider it a very fine book. I very highly recommend this one. ( )

Inventive. Thought-provoking. Riveting. I started this book with some hesitation. By the time I was a third of the way through it, I realized this would be one story that would stay with me for a long time. Great read. ( )

A heartbreaking story of a man who is born old and ages backwards. He falls in love with a girl and has different interactions and moments with her through his lifetime.
Greer did a great job of developing Max Tivoli's character throughout the whole transition of his life. It was tough at times to read because you know his happiness won't last as he progressively got younger. Alice, Max's love, was the weakest part of the story. She seemed almost unworthy of Max's love and devotion because she was so flaky and unlikable as a character. Otherwise, this book was very enjoyable. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2005/05... ( )