Book Review: Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Publisher: Lee Boudreaux Books
Publication Date: July 18, 2017
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Who says you can’t run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes–it would be too awkward–and you can’t say no–it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world.
QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?
ANSWER: You accept them all.
What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last.
Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story.
When Arthur Less is invited to his former boyfriend’s wedding, he doesn’t want to go. In order to have an excuse not to go, he accepts a variety of invitations to other events around the world. He’s an author and all of the events have something to do with writing or literature. While traveling, he reflects back on his life because he is about to turn fifty. He remembers his first love, who was an older poet, and his time with the boyfriend who is getting married.
Less won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and I have to say, I’m a bit baffled as to why. It’s touted as being a really funny book but I only found it to be mildly amusing in parts. It does satirize the publishing industry and literary world so I imagine that people in those worlds might find it funnier than most. It brought to mind when LaLa Land won all sorts of awards even though it wasn’t that great of a movie because Hollywood types love movies about Hollywood and will vote for them to win awards.
My book club read Less for our May meeting and most of us were “meh” about it. Have you read it – what did you think?
