Reviews for Max Tivoli
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Praise for The Confessions of Max Tivoli
“Enchanting….Like Proust, Greer presents life as essentially a solitude, an ever-renewed exile from the present, a shifting set of gorgeous mirages that nothing but descriptive genius can hold fast. Max writes, ‘Life is short, and full of sorrows, and I loved it.’ His poignantly awry existence, set out with such a wealth of verbal flourishes and gilded touches, serves as a heightened version of the strangeness, the muted disharmony, of being human.”
—John Updike, The New Yorker
“THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI is a wondrous novel, shimmering with simultaneous chords of sadness, loss and enchantment. The book also fascinates in its textured view of pre-quake San Francisco, a city of ‘gilt-edged gas lamps and velvet walls.’ [Greer has] arrived, brilliantly, with an unforgettable novel.”
—Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle
“Andrew Sean Greer is one of the most talented writers around, feeling and funny, with a genuinely fine prose style and a sensibility to match.”
—Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
“Every once in a great while, a truly original voice springs up, seemingly out of nowhere, and tells us a story unlike anything we’ve ever heard before. Andrew Sean Greer is a devastating new writer, and THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI marks the beginning of what I suspect will be a significant and lasting career.”
—Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
“THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI leaves its readers in much the same state as its narrator: bewildered by the sheer unlikely strangeness of life and feeling somehow both younger and wiser on that account.”
—Chris Lehmann, The Washington Post
“Max may be a monster, but he is a profoundly human one, a creature whose unusual disorder, far from making him a freak to be wondered at, simply magnifies his normal and recognizable emotions, sharpening their poignancy.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“There’s something wonderfully clean and old-fashioned in the way Greer’s elegant and graceful style meshes perfectly with the period.”
—The Miami Herald
“Heartrending…beautifully written…this is a rich and mesmerizing fable. Time will not reverse its impact.”
—People (4-star critic’s choice)
“[Greer] has an eerie maturity not often found in young novelists. His prose, incantatory but not overheated, idles along with a top-hatted, almost courtly elegance….A fable of surpassing gravity and beauty, THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI returns Andrew Sean Greer to the central concerns of his first novel: how time ravages love, and how love takes its revenge.”
—David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle
“[A] deft new modern master, poised to take your imagination (not to mention the literary awards circuit) by storm.”
—Elle.com