3 Review(s)

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," begins one chapter of critically acclaimed author Lee Siegel's new novel, "Love and the Incredibly Old Man". "In the beginning," starts another. That's how low a desperate novelist will go when hired as a ghostwriter by an elderly, irascible, conquistador-costumed man claiming to be the 540-year-old Juan Ponce de Leon. The fantastic life of that legendary explorer - inventor of rum, cigars, Coca-Cola, and popcorn - is the frame for Siegel's fourth chronicle of love, lies, luck, loss, and labia.Summoned with cold hard cash and a pinch of flattery, a professor and novelist named Lee Siegel finds himself in Eagle Springs, Florida, attempting to give form to the life of the man who, contrary to popular and historical opinion, did indeed unearth the Fountain of Youth.Spending humid days listening to the romantic ramblings of the eccentric old man and sleepless nights doubting, yet trying to craft these reminiscences into a narrative that will satisfy the literary aspirations of his subject, Siegel spins an improbable but compelling tale filled with insatiable monarchs, Native Americans, philandering cantors, deliriously passionate nuns, delicate actresses, androgynous artists, and deceptions small and large. For Ponce de Leon, and for Siegel too, centuries of conquest and colonialism, fortune and identity, are all refracted through the memories of the conquistador's lovers, each and every one of them adored "more than any other woman ever."Comic, melancholic, lusty, and fully engaged with the act of invention, whether in love or on the page, "Love and the Incredibly Old Man" continues the real Lee Siegel's exuberant exploration of that sentiment which Ponce de Leon confesses has "transported me to the most joyous heights, plunged me to the most dismal depths, and dropped me willy-nilly and dumbfounded at all places in between."