Wednesday December 08, 2004 The Confessions of Max Tivoli
The Confessions of Max Tivoli - Andrew Sean Greer (2004)
*** 1/2 (out of 5)
Max Tivoli, the title character of The Confessions of Max Tivoli, is a man born in San Francisco in 1871. At birth, Tivoli resembled a man approximately 70 years old. As he ages throughout the novel, his physical characteristics revert towards infancy (i.e. PhysicalAge = 70 - ChronologicalAge).
The novel is broken up into three parts - in each part, Max meets/finds Alice Levy. In the first part, he meets Alice and falls madly in love with her. Max and Alice are both young, but Max appears to be a much older man. His attempt to establish a romantic relationship with Alice is foiled and Alice is taken away by her mother to a location unbeknownst to Max. In each of the succeeding parts of the novel, Max locates an unrecognizing Alice and establishes anew his relationship with her.
I found the main characters, Max and Alice, a bit unrealistically - and sometimes anachronistically - portrayed. Moreover, I sometimes found it difficult (not impossible) to sympathize with the characters due to their terrible life-choices and sometimes appalling behavior. Despite this, I recommend the novel based primarily on its poignant treatment of the main themes - love and time. I found the final part particularly moving. Greer's rich - albeit occasionally florid - prose was also a plus.
( Dec 08 2004, 05:20:10 PM PST )
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Thunderbird Released
Mozilla has released the much anticipated Thunderbird 1.0 email client. Read the announcement here.
As a big fan of Firefox, I am looking forward to giving Thunderbird a whirl (the integrated RSS reader is of particular interest to me). I intend to start migrating this weekend.
( Dec 08 2004, 08:58:29 AM PST )
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