The Confessions of Max Tivoli, written by Andrew Sean Greer is truly a modern masterpiece. Centering around the life of the title character, Max as he grows mentally forward from child to adult but physically backwards. In a saddening turn of events, he knows the exact year that he will finally succumb to a death in infant form and wears a pendant that reads "1941" around his neck as a kind of constant reminder.
The main theme of the book would either be love or alienation, depending on whether you see the glass as half full or not. Max falls in love not once, but three times with the same woman, but he tries (and sometimes fails) to keep his true identity a secret. He has been trained from a young age to be what they think he is, having only one true friend who knows him for what he truly is.
Greer writes a beautiful novel. This being his second, I really need to find his first - The Path of Minor Planets - and give it a go. This is one of those books I just happened to pluck off a shelf while I was on break at Barnes and Noble and had to immediately purchase it. Through some terrible happenstance, it got lost, so naturally I went and bought it a second time.
The writing is absolutely stunning - it has a rather prosey feel when waxing on the destructive force of love ("It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing to waste ones life for love") and it reads in a rather turn-of-the-century lit kind of way. If this sounds a lot like the whole Benjamin Button thing, that's what I thought, too... Having not seen that particular film, I can't really make any judgments, but when I saw previews for it I was a bit miffed that it seemed to have exactly the same premise. Perhaps someone can enlighten me before I sit down to watch it?
Regardless, this novel is brilliant. Nothing I could say about it will ever do it justice, so you should probably read it.
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