F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons

I absolutely fell in love with this charming little tale at its poignant beginning. No doubt the Brad Pitt's vehicle brought it to my attention, though "The Great Gatsby" is on my imaginary reading list - I've never had a list, you see.

"Are you my father?" he demanded. With which F.Scott Fitzgerald turned mischievous, and the world upside down. Age is just a little inconvenience, I like to think. But imagine this: your neonate has just been delivered from heaven answering all your prayers - as all cherubic babies do - and in the midst of exultation, it suddenly goes horribly wrong, in the form of a septuagenarian born. So Benjamin Buttons, the only child of Roger Buttons, comes into this world, all wrinkled, querulous, with a quavering, croaky guff. Impertinent son, and father! For the son has a taste for a cigar or two, while the father, for all his illusions, bought him a rattle! Though, Benjamin's obligating nature becomes more prominent as the days go by, so too his father's obstinacy dissolves.

Now, the gaffer goes to university, or attempts to, only to be deemed a lunatic posing as a freshman. He falls in love with at first sight and marries a girl of twenty, while he looks all of fifty. He goes to war a young man of thirty, all to evade his aging wife, once the love of his life.

As the story winded down to little Benjamin's nurse crooning to him - what, at four or five? - about the setting sun and bedtime, the reader couldn't help but felt a little sadness, at the eventual darkness and the end of all things pleasant. Even though there is only sweetness when asleep, and there are no memories or regrets too painful to recollect.