“The crazy quilt of a writer’s life: warm enough, though it never quite covers the toes,” writes Andrew Sean Greer in his latest novel ‘Less’ that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2018. And it is a writer’s fascinating and often filled-with-self-doubt life that Greer shows us in ‘Less’ through Arthur Less. We are told that Pulitzer is pronounced “Pull-it-sir” not “Pew-lit-sir” and that the protagonist, Arthur Less, will never win a Pull-it-sir Prize. For Arthur, who is about to turn 50 and thinks he is possibly the “only gay man to have ever grown old,” this makes him consider himself “mediocre”. His first book was a moderate success but publishers have rejected his latest work. To make matters worse, Freddy, his younger ex-boyfriend, is getting married and Less doesn’t have an excuse not to attend the wedding. So he runs away, hopping from one literary event to another; events to which he had been invited to, but once had no plans of attending.

 

As Arthur travels the world, from New York, Paris and Berlin to Morocco, India and Kyoto, in a style reminiscent of Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, you see him deal with a lot of emotional baggage and he is also forever getting pulled into his past as random events force Arthur to reminisce on life. Apart from the memories, there are also a lot of mishaps and misunderstandings that make Arthur’s life far less “mediocre” than he believes it to be.

 

With ‘Less’, you go on a journey around the world while rediscovering what it means to love and be loved

 

The travelogue bit of the narrative that runs parallel to Less’s reflections on love and relationships make for compelling storytelling. During the various stages of Arthur’s soul-searching journey we also get to meet fascinating new characters. It’s all neatly tied together by a narrator who we know is someone in Arthur’s life but whose identity Greer has you guessing until the very end. With ‘Less’, you go on a journey around the world while rediscovering what it means to love and be loved.

 

‘Less’ isn’t laugh-out-loud funny but it’s one of the wittiest and smartest novels you will ever read. That we guarantee. Arthur, in his self-deprecating and insecure ways, is a charming character. Greer is a fine writer, a master of words, who is able to keep it fun and poignant at the same time. In an interview, Greer said he had written a book he wanted to, and by doing so has given us a book we have always wanted to read.

 

Book: Less

Genre: Fiction

Author: Andrew Sean Greer

Published: 2018

Publisher: Le Boudreaux Books

Language: English

Pages: 261, Paperback