Good Reads / Community Library Notes
Less
Andrew Sean Greer
Review by Priscilla Comen
Less
Andrew Sean Greer
Review by Priscilla Comen
Less, by Andrew Sean Greer, is told by an omniscient narrator who sees all, hears all, and tells all about Arthur Less. Less is a homosexual whose former young lover, Freddy Pelu, is about to marry Tom Dennis. Devastated, Less decides to travel the world instead of attending the wedding. He begins in Mexico where he doesn’t speak or understand a word of Spanish. Told with humor and pathos, author Greer captivates us with his characters
Less worries about getting old; he’s forty-nine and can’t face fifty. He finds another lover, who is twenty-four. His former lover, Robert, was a famous older poet who won a Pulitzer Prize. Robert wrote constantly and is a genius. When Less travels to Berlin after Mexico, he meets Bastion and falls for him. He wins a prize and must appear on stage. He hates public speaking and often leaves before his turn to speak. In Berlin, he murders the German language, but people listen to him as he reads his novel. Bastion listens best.
In Paris, on a layover before flying to India, he calls an old friend, Alexander, who invites him to a party and insists he come. Less shops in men’s boutiques and tries on different suits, buys one, and has it fitted. Is this me? he wonders. He loves it. The tailor loves him. Someone he meets at the party tells him he’s a “bad gay.” He’s confused by this. He meets Javier and they connect, but Less has a flight to catch to Marakesh. There he will ride a camel and turn fifty. Everyone on the camel tour gets sick except Less and his friend Lewis, who tells Less that he and his husband Clark are getting divorced after twenty years of marriage. Less is devastated again. This is a story about love of all kinds.
Author Greer makes fifty a monumental age. The first person narrator hears Less say he wants to give up love. Does Less give it up? Does he finish the novel he has been writing during his travels? What is the surprise that awaits him at the end of his trip? Find this delightful novel on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library,
Less worries about getting old; he’s forty-nine and can’t face fifty. He finds another lover, who is twenty-four. His former lover, Robert, was a famous older poet who won a Pulitzer Prize. Robert wrote constantly and is a genius. When Less travels to Berlin after Mexico, he meets Bastion and falls for him. He wins a prize and must appear on stage. He hates public speaking and often leaves before his turn to speak. In Berlin, he murders the German language, but people listen to him as he reads his novel. Bastion listens best.
In Paris, on a layover before flying to India, he calls an old friend, Alexander, who invites him to a party and insists he come. Less shops in men’s boutiques and tries on different suits, buys one, and has it fitted. Is this me? he wonders. He loves it. The tailor loves him. Someone he meets at the party tells him he’s a “bad gay.” He’s confused by this. He meets Javier and they connect, but Less has a flight to catch to Marakesh. There he will ride a camel and turn fifty. Everyone on the camel tour gets sick except Less and his friend Lewis, who tells Less that he and his husband Clark are getting divorced after twenty years of marriage. Less is devastated again. This is a story about love of all kinds.
Author Greer makes fifty a monumental age. The first person narrator hears Less say he wants to give up love. Does Less give it up? Does he finish the novel he has been writing during his travels? What is the surprise that awaits him at the end of his trip? Find this delightful novel on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library,