A number of years ago I made a decision: I was not going to spend any more of my wild and precious life reading books about how hard it is to be an old white man. Overall I’ve been pleased with this choice and think I am a happier person for spending my time reading YA and mysteries rather than Tom Wolfe or Jonathan Franzen or whatever else the New Yorker wants me to care about. But every now and then one of these “I am a white man with broken relationships and concerns about my legacy” stories slips through. Often this just reinforces my original decision (I am still mad about the time I’ve spent on Philip Roth) but on those rare occasions when I am pleasantly surprised, I want to give credit where it’s due. So let’s talk about Less by Andrew Sean Greer.

Arthur Less is about to turn 50, his latest novel has been rejected by his publisher, and he just got an invitation to his younger not-quite-a-boyfriend’s wedding to someone else. He clearly cannot possibly attend, so he patches together enough teaching/residency/vacation offers to make up a months-long trip around the world. The book follows him from his California home to Mexico, Paris, Morocco, India, and assorted other locations as he tries to overcome both small daily indignities and his looming worries that his life has amounted to nothing. This sounds like it would fall squarely in my hated “old white man” category, but it somehow covers that ground while also being quite charming and feeling relatable to those outside its main character’s demographic. Arthur has a sense of the absurd that gives him a perspective on what’s happening to/around him, and the author is aware enough to actually address the old white man issue within the plot in a quite clever way. It’s a brief book and quick read, but it’s stuck with me for days, leaving me thinking about how we perceive ourselves vs. how others do, and especially about how we are seen by those who love us.

A couple of final notes: first, I am definitely not breaking any news here, since Less won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. As is typical for me, I’m just chiming in late on something already widely recognized as great. Second, as I was looking at various reviews and comments on this book, I saw a number of people refer to this as a comedic novel. This surprised me, since I didn’t think it was funny at all. I do tend to be sensitive to stories about people embarrassing themselves and that does make up a big part of this story–if other people find that funny, I can only conclude that they must be monsters. Maybe some reviewers feel like they have to call it comedic simply because it doesn’t feature constant addiction and death with a backdrop of genocide? I think it’s more accurate to say that this is a bittersweet story that at times made me very sad, but ultimately surprised me with how full of hope and supportive of happiness it turned out to be.

Kinsey’s Three-ish Word Review:  Delicate and surprisingly emotional

You might also like:  The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce or Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. This was actually a tough one for me and I really struggled to think of books that shared both the general sort of story issues but also had the same sort of sweet and sad feeling. I would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this one–Less surprised me so much that I am still trying to get my head around it.