Items related to The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel
"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.
Born with the physical appearance of an elderly man, Max grows older mentally like any child, but his body appears to age backwards, growing younger every year. And yet, his physical curse proves to be a blessing, allowing him to try to win the heart of the same woman three times as at each successive encounter she fails to recognize him, taking him for a stranger, so giving Max another chance at love.
Set against the historical backdrop of San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century, Andrew Sean Greer's The Confessions of Max Tivoli is a beautiful and daring feat of the imagination, questioning the very nature of love, time, and what it means to be human.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
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.
About the Author:
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
Andrew Sean Greer is the bestselling author of five works of fiction, including The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was named a Best Book of the Year by both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. He is the recipient of the Northern California Book Award, the California Book Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, the O Henry Award for Short Fiction, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Public Library. Greer lives in San Francisco.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherPicador
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0312423810
- ISBN 13 9780312423810
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages288
- Rating
Buy New
Learn more about this copy
US$ 4.00
Shipping:
US$ 4.25
Within U.S.A.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Stock Image
The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think0312423810
Buy New
US$ 4.00
Convert currency
Stock Image
The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_0312423810
Buy New
US$ 4.70
Convert currency
Stock Image
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Paperback. Publisher overstock, may contain remainder mark on edge. Seller Inventory # 9780312423810B
Buy New
US$ 5.93
Convert currency
Stock Image
The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Excellent Condition.Excels in customer satisfaction, prompt replies, and quality checks. Seller Inventory # Scanned0312423810
Buy New
US$ 6.25
Convert currency
Stock Image
The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # FrontCover0312423810
Buy New
US$ 9.20
Convert currency
Seller Image
The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel by Greer, Andrew Sean [Paperback ]
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780312423810
Buy New
US$ 14.08
Convert currency
Stock Image
The Confessions of Max Tivoli Format: Paperback
Published by
MacMillan Publishers
(2005)
ISBN 10: 0312423810
ISBN 13: 9780312423810
New
Softcover
Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. Brand New. Seller Inventory # 9780312423810
Buy New
US$ 10.35
Convert currency
Seller Image
The Confessions of Max Tivoli (Paperback or Softback)
Published by
Picador USA 2/1/2005
(2005)
ISBN 10: 0312423810
ISBN 13: 9780312423810
New
Paperback or Softback
Quantity: 5
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback or Softback. Condition: New. The Confessions of Max Tivoli 0.61. Book. Seller Inventory # BBS-9780312423810
Buy New
US$ 14.60
Convert currency
Stock Image
CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI
Published by
Picador Paper
(2005)
ISBN 10: 0312423810
ISBN 13: 9780312423810
New
Softcover
Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. Brand New! Not Overstocks or Low Quality Book Club Editions! Direct From the Publisher! We're not a giant, faceless warehouse organization! We're a small town bookstore that loves books and loves it's customers! Buy from Lakeside Books!. Seller Inventory # OTF-S-9780312423810
Buy New
US$ 10.94
Convert currency
Stock Image
The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard0312423810
Buy New
US$ 11.66
Convert currency