This book won the Pulitzer Prize. I didn’t know that until I sat down to write this review, so I have no idea how it wound up on my radar. I’m very glad it did. Arthur Less is a novelist. He has an enemy and a nemesis, which is a lot of antagonists for someone who isn’t particularly antagonistic; an identity-defining blue suit; friends; and ex-boyfriends, the most recent of whom is marrying another man. And he is about to turn 50. Arthur can’t bring […]
He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you.
Less – 3/5 Stars This is the novel that won the Pulitzer Prize this year, and I do like it. But it’s almost like Andrew Sean Greer tricked or taunted the Pulitizer Committee into giving him the prize since this is a novel about a slightly failed or at least merely moderately successful writer putzing around while others around him remind him of his own mediocrity or middlingness but doing things like winning the Pulitzer Prize. The novel begins with Less, the eponymous protagonist, being […]
Droll and endearing, with a fair amount of casual sex
I always think it’s rather brave when I see a novel or a movie with a title like this. You’d better be pretty confident about your product, knowing that you are risking some smart-ass, less-than-clever critic heading their review “I couldn’t care LESS,” or “I could really use LESS of this book,” yada yada yada. Even if critics like it, they are going to be tempted to say something like “I want more of LESS!” So, points to Andrew Sean Greer for braving that potential […]