Less by Andrew Sean Greer

How to heal a broken heart? For Arthur Less, the protagonist of Andrew Sean Greer’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Less, the answer lies in flight—an extended journey across the globe. Arthur, a writer on the cusp of fifty who is fleeing both the wedding of his one-time lover Freddy and his status as a mid-list author whose writing career appears to be on the skids, cobbles together a series of literary engagements in far-flung places in an effort to put his past behind him. Care to guess how that goes? This engaging episodic novel, cleverly structured around the itinerary of Arthur’s trip and his encounters with the colorful and illuminating characters he meets along the way, plays out in vivid scenes that are both funny and tender. Andrew Sean Greer’s Less is a terrific armchair-travel read that is both entertaining and wise in its revelations.