The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Book Summary Information
Author: F. Scott FitzgeraldEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); German (Original Language); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-13
ISBN: 1607960710
Number of pages: 48
Publisher: BN Publishing
Book Reviews of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Book Review: The youngest old man in the world
Summary: 5 Stars
The idea behind "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a very simple one -- what if a human being were born an old man, and aged backwards towards babyhood? It's an unusually whimsical idea for the legendary F. Scott Fitzgerald, but this short story explores it very well, with poignancy and a measure of humor.
In 19th-century Baltimore, Roger Button was horrified when he saw his newborn son -- a newborn son who is actually a wizened old man who speak, walk and is fully self-aware. Though Benjamin is dressed and treated as much like a child as possible, he has the sensibilities and habits of an elderly man. And by the time he's twelve, he finds that his aging is REVERSING rather than progressing.
As his life goes on, Benjamin must deal with the problems of trying to live a semi-normal life -- trying to enroll in college, working for his father, falling in love and marrying. But as his body de-ages, his mind does as well, and in his twilight years he begins to do all the things that young men of the time did, until his bizarre lifespan reaches its unnatural conclusion.
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is one of those short stories that really leaves you wishing it were a full-length novel, just because the whole idea is so rich. While you more or less know how things will go for Benjamin Button, the pleasure is following his life as he changes and evolves, and how the world deals with a man who's aging backwards.
In particular, Fitzgerald seems to be taking some jabs at people who are so blinkered that the bizarre doesn't even reach them. Benjamin's wife and kid resent his de-aging, but they insist that the whole thing is a "joke" or his attempt to be "different from everyone else." His fusty son Roscoe is the worst ("It seemed to him that his father, in refusing to look sixty, had not behaved like a 'red-blooded he-man'").
Fitzgerald's writing is also sublimely atmospheric ("the eastern sky was suddenly cracked with light") with lush descriptions of everything about the world that Benjamin experiences ("her feet were glittering buttons at the hem of her bustled dress"). He also fills it with a sense of sorrow and lingering pain, since despite the outward success of his life, Benjamin is doomed to never live it normally.
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is indeed a curious story -- strange, insightful and sometimes barbed in tone, but always amazingly written.
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