"'How did they even know I was gay?' He asked this from his front porch, wearing a kimono ... He looks like a Fire Island supervillain rapper."
"'It is our duty to show something beautiful from our world. The gay world. But in your books, you make the characters suffer without reward. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were Republican.'"
Enrobed in satire and metaphor, "Less" is a stirring and emotional tale of one man's mid-life crisis.
Andrew Sean Greer painstakingly renders Arthur Less, a minor author dealing with the loss of new and old loves as his 50th birthday unceasingly approaches. The novel takes many turns as Less travels the world, giving himself space to deal with unresolved issues and the stark presence of decisions not made and things left unsaid.
"They might have done, many of them. So many people will do. But once you've actually been in love, you can't live with 'will do'; it's worse than living with yourself."
The winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, "Less" manages to balance heartbreak, denial, self-awareness, and mortality into a sweeping tale peopled by incredible characters.
"Less is technically Christian. There is really no other word for someone who celebrates Christmas and Easter, even if only as craft projects."
Propelled by an enviable pace and the right balance of humor and melancholy, the reader is swept along until a narrator reveal and a beautifully executed conclusion stamp "Less" as an unforgettable, unavoidable read.
"I hadn't known I needed him there. Like a landmark, a pyramid-shaped stone or a cypress, that we assume will never move. So we can find our way home. And then, inevitably, one day -- it's gone. And we realize that we thought we were the only changing thing, the only variable, in the world; that the objects and people in our lives are there for our pleasure, like the playing pieces of a game, and cannot move of their own accord; that they are held in place by our need for them, by our love."
