While Arthur’s rudderlessness limits the extent one invests in his plight, his eclectic travel experiences and the intrigue surrounding the narrator’s identity make for compelling reading. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. “He kisses-how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Less is about writers, writing and the broader challenges of a career and life involving creative personas. With regards to its subject matter, this novel is effectively preaching to the converted. Ron Charles of The Washington Post called Less ‘the funniest novel of the year’.
There are always a few drops left in the bottle of indignity. I found myself highlighting countless passages, admiring the subtle yet potent irony woven into this narrative’s fabric. One who made her living flaying herself alive in public had said the he, tall and young and hopeful Arthur Less, was without skin. Once in his twenties, a poet he had been talking with extinguished her cigarette in a potted plant and said, “You’re like a person without skin.” A poet had said this. The quirky winsĮventually, the quirkiness and lyricism of the narrator’s observations and their ironic and conversational tone won me over. It took a little while for me to get my head around this to stop fighting it. The only way it works is if that narrator, at some later point having heard of Arthur’s travel tales, is imagining observing him in those situations. It is clear this narrator is a person in Arthur’s life (and thus a character mentioned within the novel), but it is not plausible this person is observing him in the present tense. The pose of a young man.īut on occasion more like third-person. Look at him: seated primly on the hotel lobby’s plush sofa, blue suit and white shirt, legs knee-crossed so that one polished loafer hangs free of its heel. What immediately struck me about this novel was its unusual narrative structure predominantly first-person present tense (identity undisclosed) yet omnipresent.įrom where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad. But since this was already on my wishlist, its recent Pulitzer Prize firmed up my decision to purchase. The enjoyment of literature is notoriously subjective. Literary awards are rarely sufficient motivation for me to choose one book over another. don’t you just love the brevity yet gravitas of Andrew Sean Greer’s title. Disclosure: If you click a link in this post and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission.
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