Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I Could Make a Pun Here, But Just Read the Book

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

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BINGO: Rainbow Flag Best for: People who enjoy quality fiction, ridiculously good writing, and are looking for something a little different in their protagonist. In a nutshell: Writer Arthur Less’s ex-boyfriend is getting married. Arthur Less is about to turn 50. Instead of wallowing, Arthur Less decides to accept all the literary invites he’s received and spend the summer traveling the world. Worth quoting: “You and me, we’ve met geniuses. And we know we’re not like them, don’t we? What is it like to go […]

Beautiful writing, if a little drifting

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

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I’ve joked that a friend once recommended a Dan Brown book and I no longer take recommendations from her, but I lied. Less was her suggestion and I am so so glad I listened. Arthur Less’s 50th birthday is approaching, as is the wedding of the young man he was until very recently dating. He’d prefer to deal with neither of these things, so he instead accepts every other invitation on his desk and signs up to send most of the year traveling much of the world, […]

He kisses . . . like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can only use the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

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The Pulitzer Prize for fiction tends to be more miss than hit for me, especially in the last several years, so when I heard the announcement last spring about Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t know the author by name, hadn’t heard anything about the book, and figured I could safely skip this one. But then I read a brief synopsis: gay novelist in his 40’s, heartbroken and struggling with his work, runs away and something-something-I-don’t-remember because I stopped reading […]

Less is More

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This book won the Pulitzer Prize. I didn’t know that until I sat down to write this review, so I have no idea how it wound up on my radar. I’m very glad it did. Arthur Less is a novelist. He has an enemy and a nemesis, which is a lot of antagonists for someone who isn’t particularly antagonistic; an identity-defining blue suit; friends; and ex-boyfriends, the most recent of whom is marrying another man. And he is about to turn 50. Arthur can’t bring […]

He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you.

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Less – 3/5 Stars This is the novel that won the Pulitzer Prize this year, and I do like it. But it’s almost like Andrew Sean Greer tricked or taunted the Pulitizer Committee into giving him the prize since this is a novel about a slightly failed or at least merely moderately successful writer putzing around while others around him remind him of his own mediocrity or middlingness but doing things like winning the Pulitzer Prize. The novel begins with Less, the eponymous protagonist, being […]

Droll and endearing, with a fair amount of casual sex

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I always think it’s rather brave when I see a novel or a movie with a title like this. You’d better be pretty confident about your product, knowing that you are risking some smart-ass, less-than-clever critic heading their review “I couldn’t care LESS,” or “I could really use LESS of this book,” yada yada yada. Even if critics like it, they are going to be tempted to say something like “I want more of LESS!”  So, points to Andrew Sean Greer for braving that potential […]



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