Harper Ellison★ Sage · Lv 7
todayA comic novel with a real ache underneath. I finished it grinning and a little teary.
Fiction
Less
4.7· 1,069 ratings
Published 2017280 pagesEnglishComic · Bittersweet
Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.
Why read it
To dodge his ex-boyfriend's wedding and the humiliation of turning fifty, a failing novelist accepts a string of half-baked literary invitations and circles the globe, running from heartbreak straight into it.
The premise
Greer's comic novel follows Arthur Less on a bumbling world tour of conferences, residencies, and misadventures, all of it a flight from love and aging. Beneath the wit lies a warm, wise story about second chances and the surprising possibility of happiness.
The story behind it
Published in 2017, Less won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a rare honor for a comic novel. Greer has said the book grew out of his own anxieties about aging and failure.
What awaits inside
- 01
Running from love
What awaits is a globe-trotting escape that turns out to be a journey straight toward the feeling Less is fleeing.
- 02
Comedy of a fading writer
Less's professional flops and social blunders are painfully, lovingly funny.
- 03
Aging with grace
Turning fifty becomes an occasion for reckoning rather than despair.
- 04
The narrator's secret
A quietly revealed narrative frame gives the whole comedy an unexpected, moving purpose.
From the book
Less delivering a lecture in fractured German at a Berlin teaching post, convinced he is fluent.
The birthday in the Moroccan desert, where Less confronts turning fifty far from home.
4.7
1,069 ratings
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