—Four sticks of doom

"Youth is wasted on the young" is one of those tedious bromides with which we’re all familiar. But in Andrew Sean Greer’s brilliant book, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, the truth of this phrase is put on trial. A self-described monster, Max is a creature born into the world wrong. At his birth, he is as shriveled and wrinkled as an old man, and as his mind grows older, his body inexplicably grows younger. At 35, his looks and his mind finally converge, and Max gets to stop pretending to be something other than what he is. But then his body keeps going, and he can’t stop its progress any more than the rest of us can halt the onset of wrinkles and sags. He dies his hair gray and walks with a cane, hoping his wife will not notice his body growing younger and firmer, knowing that when she does, the dream that is his happiness will dissolve into whispers. Time is an enemy to Max, too.

Contrary to what you might expect, this unique situation is not a boon to Max. He doesn’t learn anything about life until his mind is quite old, just like the rest of us. He fears the same things we fear—loneliness and old age, which for him means the baby years in which sense and consciousness melt away.

This book is all melancholy. Greer depicts life as a sad dance in which we love others who can never love us back. It’s a bit like those old Archie cartoons, in which Veronica chased after Archie, who pined for Betty, who was in love with Reggie, who was mad for Veronica. The characters are tragically mismatched, wretched in their impossible loves—always hoping, and yet hopeless. Add to that the strange relationships that ensue as father becomes proxy brother, husband becomes son, finally culminating in a world-weary Max, who appears to be eleven, befriending his own son of the same age. It’s all very convoluted and complex, but every bit of these skewed affinities rings true.

The writing is lyrical and gorgeous. Greer has a way of putting words to things I would have thought were indescribable. You know that feeling you get when you read something that is entirely new and yet familiar: "yes, that’s exactly it," you say to yourself. I guarantee this will happen to you several times while you read the book. Greer is what the psychics call an "old soul," and at only 33, he seems much, much wiser than his age. Hmm . . . kinda makes you wonder . . . .