Helpful Score: 3
Recommended to me by a friend, this is a good book - but not one that really suited my mood this week. It's a melancholy musing on the futility of love.
The narrator, Max Tivoli, was born appearing to be a wizened old man of 70 - and for his entire life, ages backwards, gaining perspective and experience as physically, he becomes younger.
At 17 (when he appears to be an elderly gentleman), he meets the love of his life, Alice. However, she falls in love with Max's best friend, the young and handsome Hughie. Max has an affair with Alice's mother instead, but the two women move away when the elder notices Max's seemingly perverted attentions to her daughter.
Years later, Max rediscovers Alice and, under an assumed identity, marries her. They are happy for a while, but then she leaves him for another man.
Hughie sticks by Max's side, even as he gets younger and younger.
When Max appears to be only 11, he concocts a scheme to infiltrate Alice's life yet again, this time becoming her adopted son.
However, he drags Hughie into this scheme - not considering the emotional ramifications - that Alice has always loved Hughie, and that Hughie, all these years, has actually loved Max.
No one actually ever gets to have and keep what they truly want.
The language of the book is very flowery - some may find it to be a bit much. Max is a rather self-pitying character - not as loathsome as he makes himself out to be, but not that attractive, either.
The narrator, Max Tivoli, was born appearing to be a wizened old man of 70 - and for his entire life, ages backwards, gaining perspective and experience as physically, he becomes younger.
At 17 (when he appears to be an elderly gentleman), he meets the love of his life, Alice. However, she falls in love with Max's best friend, the young and handsome Hughie. Max has an affair with Alice's mother instead, but the two women move away when the elder notices Max's seemingly perverted attentions to her daughter.
Years later, Max rediscovers Alice and, under an assumed identity, marries her. They are happy for a while, but then she leaves him for another man.
Hughie sticks by Max's side, even as he gets younger and younger.
When Max appears to be only 11, he concocts a scheme to infiltrate Alice's life yet again, this time becoming her adopted son.
However, he drags Hughie into this scheme - not considering the emotional ramifications - that Alice has always loved Hughie, and that Hughie, all these years, has actually loved Max.
No one actually ever gets to have and keep what they truly want.
The language of the book is very flowery - some may find it to be a bit much. Max is a rather self-pitying character - not as loathsome as he makes himself out to be, but not that attractive, either.
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