A review by spauffwrites
The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer

3.0

Be warned: Max is not one of your warm and fuzzy "likable" characters. His life is depressing. He ages backwards, born as a 70-year-old man, doomed to die as a baby. His father leaves him and his mother at a young age. The girl he loves rarely notices him. In response, Max is childish, thinks mostly of himself and his own desires and doesn't realize how selfish he's been until the very end of the novel. But the writing was beautiful, from the very first line: "We are each the love of someone's life." The story is strongest during Max's "childhood" and "adolescence" when he first meets Hughie, his best friend, and his future wife, Alice. After Alice leaves him, the story kind of falls apart, along with Max's life. It picks back up again after Max is reunited with Alice -- he's a child and she's an old woman -- and the story's complicated message about love becomes clearer: We are each the love of someone's life, but that love is not always reciprocated. Like I said, depressing.