Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Less by Andrew Sean Greer


I recently read the hardback edition of Less by Andrew Sean Greer. Less by Andrew Sean Greer won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which was the main reason I ended up choosing to read this novel in the first place. Additionally, I've never read a novel by Andrew Sean Greer before, so that was another reason I chose to read Less.

I thought Less by Andrew Sean Greer was a good read overall, but not a great one... Yes, I liked the story, the premise of the novel, and most of the characters... But Less by Andrew Sean Greer will soon become unmemorable to me in the long run. 

The following is a plot summary for Less by Andrew Sean Greer from Amazon:
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.
A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.
I am giving Less by Andrew Sean Greer a rating of 3 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!!

2 comments:

  1. I haven't read this one but I have read the author before. He is a 3 star guy for me too.

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    1. Glad to hear you've read another book by the author before and have given him the same rating as I have for Less. I think I will skip reading another novel written by Andrew Sean Greer.

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