Fiction: Youth, as has been said - and agreed with many times - is wasted on the young. But would you prefer to begin life in old age and then work your way back to the beginning? Sounds appalling? It is, as Max Tivoli discovers in his account of the life that was stolen from him.
Born with the appearance of an ancient man in the body of a baby, his life develops into an agonising lament not so much concerned with the injustices of his weird existence as the impact it has on his search for love.
This is a strange book, heart-rending in ways but also overly mannered and languid. The anger is controlled, the tone wistful and it is all very sad without fully engaging the emotions. This is because Andrew Sean Greer writes in the style of a European dilettante addressing his reader. These "confessions" have the feel of a period novel deferring in ways to Proust, but more specifically it is the voice of Nabokov that presides over a narrative of regrets.
As the novel opens, Max makes the statement by which he has lived: "We are each the love of someone's life."
It becomes a mantra of sorts. This is also an account burdened by great grief and guilt. An old man sits in a child's sandbox in the body of a boy. Max is a freak of nature. Something must have happened at the moment of conception. Why was he born old? Doomed to live his life in reverse, Max suffers the horror of ageing in reverse.
The love of his life is Alice, first spotted as a young girl. Stung by a wasp, she is beautiful in her suffering. Max has the soul of a romantic trapped in a body that repeatedly betrays him. In writing his account he appears to be seeking understanding rather than forgiveness. The only crime he has committed is in being what nature made him.
As the loved child of kindly, financially comfortable parents, he is protected. But one day, his father fails to return. This means his mother must return to their old house, now divided into flats, and take up residence in one of the apartments. There, Max's life both begins and ends in his discovery of Alice, the love, and sole purpose, of his life.
Throughout the novel there are many grotesque twists and turns. As a young man, Max looks old, but the longer he lives the more youthful his appearance becomes. The tension between his mental and physical states is cleverly drawn. For him, there is only one constant, his friend Hughie, whom Max first meets when Hughie is a boy, an ordinary young boy, a stage of existence denied to the narrator. Greer writes well, with polish and authority, and the humour is ironic and sophisticated, but for all the grace of the narrative and the utter humanity of Max's tragedy, the sheer lightness and conscious style of Greer's delivery renders the tale into little more than an artful performance.
Irony abounds throughout. For all his artist's eye, Max appears, in Alice, to have found an earthy object of his affections. After an initial disaster in their relationship, the pair are reunited some time later and eventually marry. For Max it is bliss, every inch of her being filling him with delight, every response she makes shaping his destiny. He enjoys watching her age. In time, Max becomes rich, but this freedom only allows Alice more liberty to dally elsewhere. There is love and genuine affection - just not enough.
Even at its more touching moments, the narrative is defined by a force of intellect that leaves the reader impressed merely by the conceit of the idea. Greer is sophisticated and daring. Ultimately, however, the narrative becomes trapped by its own artifice. It is not the lack of explanation, but rather the detail, limited as it is, that burdens the book. The confession is the story of a nightmare that never ends for Max.
Early in the book, he is informed that he will die in 1941, and this date lives with him. He has decided to tell his story in 1930, not from his study but from a sandbox. The horror is palpable, the feeling is not.
Praised by John Updike and Peter Carey, The Confessions of Max Tivoli is a stylish book of much poise, if little conviction. Its lightness and delicacy mitigate against it. Reading it is to admire the artistry but wonder at the lack of real pain. At one point, Max admits to having simply moved away from his mother and his younger sister. He abandons them , much as his father had earlier abandoned them all. This hollowness becomes the enduring dynamic of a surprisingly vapid novel that is so clever, so daring yet somehow so disappointing.
• Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
