Less has had two great loves in his life–one much older and the other much younger–and he has lost them both due to being unfaithful as well as keeping himself emotionally unavailable. It is that he does not know how to be in love and that he does not know how to grow older. The true failings of Less are not that he is innocent and prone to disaster. As a result, he does not realize that his work has been read and loved by people around the world or that every man he has been romantically involved with has fallen in love with him. Having once been the lover of a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, he has always felt inferior, like a person always destined to live on the edge of genius and never be the genius.

While Less is clownish in some ways, he is also more significant than he realizes. Both Less and Bridget have a relatable yet slightly cartoonish quality, like if the most awkward moments of your life were someone else’s entire life. Like with Bridget, I sympathized with Less, cringed with Less, laughed at Less, and was happy when he had a (usually accidental) victory. It is certainly a well-written book, but it reminded me somewhat of Bridget Jones’s Diary, if Bridget had been a middle-aged white gay male. During the course of his travels, Less accumulates a series of embarrassing moments, a series of surprise victories, he has several flings, and he turns fifty.Īlthough Less won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, I would consider this to be more of an escapist read rather than serious literary fiction. So he goes through his junk mail, accepting teaching appointments at random German universities, attending literary awards he has never heard of in Italy, taking on a food writing assignment in Japan, and agreeing to attend a friend of a friend’s birthday celebration in Morocco. He hasn’t committed a crime and he isn’t on the run, but he wants an iron clad reason not to attend his long term lover’s wedding. Not quite famous novelist Arthur Less desperately wants to get out of the country.

Less greer review