So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no other. At his birth, Max's father declares him a "nisse," a creature of Danish myth, as his baby son has the external physical appearance of an old, dying creature. Max grows older like any child, but his physical age appears to go backward--on the outside a very old man, but inside still a fearful child.

The story is told in three acts. First, young Max falls in love with a neighborhood girl, Alice, who ages as normally as any of us. Max, of course, does not; as a young man, he has an older man's body. But his curse is also his blessing: as he gets older, his body grows younger, so each successive time he finds his Alice, she does not recognize him. She takes him for a stranger, and Max is given another chance at love.

Set against the historical backdrop of San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century, Max's life and confessions question the very nature of time, of appearance and reality, and of love itself. A beautiful and daring feat of the imagination, The Confessions of Max Tivoli reveals the world through the eyes of a "monster," a being who confounds the very certainties by which we live and in doing so embodies in extremis what it means to be human.

My thoughts
It was hard to decide if I'd rate this book with 2 stars or 3. At times when I was reading the book, I couldn't wait for it to be done. I was enjoying it but I was also reading to finish it. Just be done with it! And then I'd get to an amazing turn of events - that aha! moment when you understand the part that was annoying you previously - and then I'd be completely hooked again! I think when an author is able to do that, you have to give them three stars. It really is some amazing writing, and takes talent to pull it off!

So the book was about a young man given an old, ugly body. He was forced to live the way people expected him to be judging from appearances. It is a love story, happy, tragic, shocking, desperate, and beautiful. I can't tell you more than that because to do so would be to give away the unexpected twists and I absolutely won't do that!

This isn't a book that I'll read again and again, but it certainly was a good read. My only advice is if you start it, stick with it.

Oh, and about the ending ... I didn't like it. Hughie should have had his way. And that's all I'll say about that!

Favorite Passage
It takes too much imagination to see the sorrows of people we take for happy. Their real battles take place, like those of the stars, in some realm of light imperceptible to the human eye. It is a feat of the mind to guess another's heart.