The Confessions of Max Tivoli

As Max explains in the story of his life, he has a rare complaint. He is born an infant in the body of a tiny old man in pre-earthquake San Francisco; as he matures, his body becomes younger. In the midst of this strange life, he encounters his true love, yet each time they meet, they are hindered by an apparent gulf in ages. Greer uses this unusual literary device to examine the nature of love, social conventions, and the role of memory in our lives. It's a poignant and rather difficult book that takes a while to get going. While Brian Keeler reads perfectly pleasantly, he doesn't help maintain our rapt attention. Characters aren't clearly delineated, and the pacing, while not bad, is even throughout. A little more energy would have helped keep listeners involved. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Starred review from December 8, 2003
With a premise straight out of science fiction (or F. Scott Fitzgerald), Greer's second novel plumbs the agonies of misdirected love and the pleasures of nostalgia with gratifying richness. Max Tivoli has aged backwards: born in San Francisco in 1871 looking like a 70-year-old man, he's now nearly 60 and looks 11. Other than this "deformity," the defining feature of Max's life is his epic love for Alice Levy, whom he meets when they are both teens (though he looks 53). Max's middle-aged gentility endears him to Alice's mother and, like an innocent Humbert Humbert, he allows Mrs. Levy to seduce him so that he might be near his love. When he steals a kiss from Alice, the Levys flee. But heartbroken Max gets another chance: when he encounters Alice years later, she does not recognize him, and he lies shamelessly and repeatedly to be near her again. Max's parents, whose marriage is itself another story of Old San Francisco, have advised him to "be what they think you are," and he usually is. But his lifelong friend Hughie Dempsey knows Max's secret, and is intimately connected to the story that unfolds, via Max's written "confessions," in small, explosive revelations. "We are each the love of someone's life," Max begins; it is the implications of that statement, rather than the details of a backward existence, that the novel illuminates. Greer (The Path of Minor Planets
) writes marvelously nuanced prose; with its turn-of-the-century lilt and poetic flashes, it is the perfect medium for this weird, mesmerizing and heartbreaking tale. (Feb.)

Forecast:
Greer's novel is a prime candidate for handselling—as effusive praise for it from booksellers suggests—and blurbs from Michael Chabon and Michael Cunningham will catch browsers' attention.