Hi. Sorry I am late. I really enjoyed the book. I love to read and this book had an unusual concept and was beautifully written.
I found two concepts of the book compelling. The first was isolation Max felt as a person with a disability. Already isolated by his unique condition, he was further isolated by his mom who insisted that he "be who they think you are" (sorry if I misquoted there). Max never really had the opportunity to be true to himself and honest with the world- instead he lived in some made-up world where he scrambled to meet everyone else's superficial assumptions of who he was. How lonely a life that would be.
I work with people with disabilities and often see a similar frustration in the people I work with. Often, the world looks at them and sees a person using a wheelchair or a person who looks "crazy" and makes assumptions- never bothering to check the accuracies of their biases. This, too, leads to isolation and loneliness.
The second theme I saw was the idea of waiting for your life to happen. Max wanted and dreamed of loving, being loved by, and sharing his life with Alice. It seemed that he stopped living in the moment- and instead lived in the future- waiting for his chance to be with Alice. I saw this in his inability to love or truly know those around him. For example, it seemed that Max never really appreciated Hughie and his loyalty and friendship.
This struck a chord with me for several reasons. I think we all do this to a certain extent. My brother is single and 26. He is frustrated with not being married or in a relationship and I know it causes him great concern. We have talked about it at length and it seems that he is finally understanding that his life is happening NOW and that NOW is a good place to be. Sometimes, we just have to stop and look at our NOW and help ourselves appreciate it.
I really appreciated the book's honesty. Life is hard. We have difficult choices to make and sometimes we make the wrong ones. I appreciated his musings at the end on the importance of relationships. I agree with Karen, that the relationships in this book seemed stilted and artificial. I wonder if that had something to do with Max and his disability. It must be difficult to have honest relationships when you aren't able to be honest about who you are.
The Confessions of Max Tivoli has caused me to hug my daughter a little tighter today and ponder on my relationship with her and the rest of my family. I think honest relationships are often a goal that is easily made but not so easily achieved.
I hope this made sense! Looking forward to the next book.
2 comments:
Thanks for sharing the story about your brother. Although I'm older and have MUCH more room to complain ;-), I'm always frustrated with people who say "I'll be happy when..."
If you're not happy with your life the way it is, you'll never be happy with it at all.
I FINISHED ON TIME!
Ladies,
I, like KT and Laurenda, had a hard time getting into this book. In fact, at about page 86 I wasn't sure I was going to make it. However, once I got into it, it was a great story. I really wanted to figure out what the Havenites were up to and what Honor was going to do about it. (I love the name . . . "Honor." So appropriate. It's also KT's and my great-great grandmother's name. She was a survivor, too. A single mom in England with three sons and a daughter to raise. The name added to my connection with the heroine.) I also enjoyed the political and historical allusions.
I, like Katrina, did some skimming over what my son, Jeff, calls "techno babel" such as "If they pop out of hyper right at the hyper limit on a reciprocal of Sirius's present course . . ." I kind of rolled my eyes, especially when it went on for pages. I just wanted to get on with the story.
I also thought Laurenda hit it right on with her comment about the language . . . why should our curse words have survived gazillions of years and a plague to show up in Honor's world? I thought the language was gratuitous.
But all-in-all it was an enjoyable read. Thanks, Katrina!
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