Scan barcode
A review by ivostarr
The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer
4.0
I finished this novel a few days ago, but it has taken me a little time to wrap my head around the ending. The book contains one of those endings that you hope for in a novel--complex on so many different levels but delivered in the most natural and exquisite manner.
Max Tivoli is many things--freak, hero, enemy, lover, evil-doer, friend, father, husband, monster, etc. And, while he is all these things, Greer never forgets Tivoli's humanity, which allows him to delicately manipulate and then balance his readers' feelings for his main character as he carefully lays out his story.
I looked up the reviews for this book after friends gave it to me as a gift. I noticed that many reviewers compare Greer's prose to Proust and Nabokov--not too shabby! While I have picked up and started Proust a few times, we have not spent much time together. I'm still waiting for the right time for us, but from the little that I have read, I understand what these reviewers are saying. There are sentences in this novel that will leave you slack-jawed at times. There were a few occasions where a particular sentence, while perhaps not the most critical to a character or plot development, was just so perfect in its description of a person or a thing that I had to just close the book and appreciate it for a bit. Here are a few of my personal favorites for you:
"Childhood is remembered in the marrow, not in the mind" (32).
"Perhaps all of us reach an age where we come to the end of our imagination" (131).
"He was not sad in marriage; he was stable. I have to assume this made him happy, in a way; marriage was a weight, a paperweight, keeping the heart from flying across the room at every breeze" (139).
"A peacock made its bored way across the sidewalk, dragging its gorgeous, filthy ballgown of a tail (146).
"I saw the words arranging themselves, but there are things that we can only say once" (251).
Anyway, I look forward to the author's new novel, which I believe comes out today. Look for him (and his book) in a bookstore near you.
Max Tivoli is many things--freak, hero, enemy, lover, evil-doer, friend, father, husband, monster, etc. And, while he is all these things, Greer never forgets Tivoli's humanity, which allows him to delicately manipulate and then balance his readers' feelings for his main character as he carefully lays out his story.
I looked up the reviews for this book after friends gave it to me as a gift. I noticed that many reviewers compare Greer's prose to Proust and Nabokov--not too shabby! While I have picked up and started Proust a few times, we have not spent much time together. I'm still waiting for the right time for us, but from the little that I have read, I understand what these reviewers are saying. There are sentences in this novel that will leave you slack-jawed at times. There were a few occasions where a particular sentence, while perhaps not the most critical to a character or plot development, was just so perfect in its description of a person or a thing that I had to just close the book and appreciate it for a bit. Here are a few of my personal favorites for you:
"Childhood is remembered in the marrow, not in the mind" (32).
"Perhaps all of us reach an age where we come to the end of our imagination" (131).
"He was not sad in marriage; he was stable. I have to assume this made him happy, in a way; marriage was a weight, a paperweight, keeping the heart from flying across the room at every breeze" (139).
"A peacock made its bored way across the sidewalk, dragging its gorgeous, filthy ballgown of a tail (146).
"I saw the words arranging themselves, but there are things that we can only say once" (251).
Anyway, I look forward to the author's new novel, which I believe comes out today. Look for him (and his book) in a bookstore near you.