Saturday, September 21, 2019

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

A breakout romantic comedy by the bestselling author of five critically acclaimed novels.

Who says you can't run away from your problems?

You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes - it would be too awkward - and you can't say no - it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world.

QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?

ANSWER: You accept them all.

What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last.

Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story.

A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.

263 pages (July 2017)

 
Lit Guide from LitLovers.
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 


Andrew Sean Greer talking about Less with Nancy Pearl on Book Lust:


This title is available for download as an eAudioBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.

Title Read-alikes: Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane; Love by Roddy Doyle; Remembrance of Things I Forgot by Bob Smith; Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier; Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner; Honestly, We Meant Well by Grant Ginder; A Beginner's Guide to Free Fall by Andy Abramowitz; This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison; Heart of Junk by Luke Geddes; George and Lizzie by Nancy Pearl; There There by Tommy Orange; Normal People by Sally Rooney; and The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai.

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