Nom de Plume

Max Tivoli was born old and grows younger as he ages. He starts out a wizened old man, descends through a dignified looking middle age into his thirties, then his twenties, and finally appears as a child as an old man.

In his aged youth, he falls in love with his downstairs neighbor, a girl his own age — though of course, she appears as a normal 15-year old while he looks 55. Later on, he encounters Alice again when they are both in their thirties, and of course, at this intersection, they look like the same age. Interspersed with the history of his past is a recounting of his present, in which he is living with a woman and her son who resembles him in age.

Unfortunately, this is one of those books that I lost interest in. Although it is well-written and nicely evocative of turn-of-the-century (20th, that is — one feels compelled to clarify these days) San Francisco, it ultimately became a little tiresome in its sprawl and leisurely pace. To give you an idea of how much interest I lost, put it this way: I had just discovered that the boy in his present is actually his son — and I had zero interest in finding out the story.