So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no other. At his birth, Max has the external physical appearance of an old, dying creature. Max grows older like any child, but his physical age appears to go backwards - on the outside a very old man, but inside still a fearful child. When Max is seventeen, he falls in love with a neighbour girl, Alice, who ages normally. 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 ...
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So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no other. At his birth, Max has the external physical appearance of an old, dying creature. Max grows older like any child, but his physical age appears to go backwards - on the outside a very old man, but inside still a fearful child. When Max is seventeen, he falls in love with a neighbour girl, Alice, who ages normally. 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 backdrop of San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century, Max's confessions are written in a prose that is beautifully modulated; its tale of love lost then found achieves an emotional resonance that is unforgettable.
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Seller's Description:
Dispatched, from the UK, within 48 hours of ordering. Though second-hand, the book is still in very good shape. Minimal signs of usage may include very minor creasing on the cover or on the spine.
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Seller's Description:
A paperback volume in Very Good or better unused condition, Near Fine, in a Fine dustjacket. This book is in stock now, in our UK premises. Photos of our books are available on request (the pictures you see on Alibris are NOT our own). Are you outside UK? Then unless you arrange shipping 'Via Alibris' we WILL cancel your order; this is due to the derisory shipping allowance that Alibris make to sellers for overseas orders.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good. 2005. Main-Re-issue. Paperback. Num Pages: 288 pages. BIC Classification: FA; FH; FJ; FM. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 198 x 128 x 20. Weight in Grams: 205......We ship daily from our Bookshop.
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Good. All orders are dispatched within 1 working day from our UK warehouse. Established in 2004, we are dedicated to recycling unwanted books on behalf of a number of UK charities who benefit from added revenue through the sale of their books plus huge savings in waste disposal. No quibble refund if not completely satisfied.
It's not often we get a second chance at something important, but protagonist Max Tivoli, born in the latter half of the 19th century, gets three tries at Alice, the love of his life, first as a stand-in for her deceased father, then as her husband, and finally as her adopted son. This is because Max has an exceedingly rare condition: his body ages backwards. Max's obsession with Alice and his desire to keep his secret obliterate everything else in his life. Family, friends, other lovers, the idea that he might do something with the time allotted to him than pursue this one woman, and many of his other needs, all must suffer to make room for the one insatiable need to be with Alice.
Greer does veer into melodrama and purplish prose in his account of how wisdom is not necessarily granted to anyone by default, no matter what their experience of the world, but this is a first-person account and so we are experiencing Max's sentimentality, Max's oddly apolitical soul, and Max's simplistic and sometimes blind approach to life. Some of Greer's writing is absolutely beautiful and moving, literature in the best sense, and a little will make you cringe, but that may be the intended effect.
