The Confessions of Max Tivoli
by Andrew Sean Greer

• San Francisco Public Library, USA
  

Publisher of Nominated Edition
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
ISBN 0374128715

"We are each the love of someone's life." So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no other.

Born with the physical appearance of an elderly man, Max grows older mentally like any child, but his body appears to age backwards, growing younger every year. And yet, his physical curse proves to be a blessing, allowing him to try to win the heart of the same woman three times as at each successive encounter she fails to recognize him, taking him for a stranger, so giving Max another chance at love.

Set against the historical backdrop of San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century, The Confessions of Max Tivoli is a beautiful and daring feat of the imagination, questioning the very nature of love, time, and what it means to be human.

Andrew Sean Greer is the author of the story collection How It Was for Me and most recently a novel, The Path of Minor Planets. He lives in San Francisco, USA.