Review | Less by Andrew Sean Greer

#QOTD – Have you ever tried to escape a situation where you can meet your ex?

My ex and I belonged to the same group of friends since we were kids. So can you imagine the awkwardness between us after we broke up as teens! We started with avoiding birthdays and day outs in the group, and now that we are adults, we are avoiding weddings and anniversaries in the group. Eventually, our entire group broke up, but I don’t think any of us took a world trip to avoid each other!

Well, Arthur Less did.

Arthur Less is a gay author of moderate fame who is about to turn 50 very soon. He has been invited to his ex’s wedding, and he just doesn’t want to go, so what does he do? To escape from attending the wedding of his ex-boyfriend of 9 years, he decides to go on a world tour of experiences and travel, and eventually we saw Less in a different country in each chapter.

The setting of this novel fascinated me as a reader. Thanks to Arthur Less, I got invited to literary award shows, I got to attend book interviews, writing retreats, teaching gigs and what not! By the end of the novel, he meets new people and revisits old friends. Also as he turns 50, he tries to rewrite his latest book which was initially turned down by the publisher.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer is such a candid story, simple yet filled with reflections on the mundanity of life as well as love, all this told with a subtle humour.

I enjoyed this one from the start, but I really started loving it about halfway through. This book was seriously, laugh-out-loud funny, yet with moments of anguish and of uncertainty.