#BooksOf2025

1. Less by Andrew Sean Greer

5.5/10

GOOD: Funny, engaging, well-written
BAD: Blow-by-blow from a single perspective, self-indulgent

Finished my first novel of 2025 last night (though I read the majority of it in 2024). Less by Andrew Sean Greer. It was fine. Engaging and fun and a few very funny lines, eg:

His first response to Peter was to ask: "How did they even know I was gay?" He asked this from his front porch, wearing a kimono.

The fact that it's not dissimilar from stuff I've written and gotten nowhere with, and that it won the Pulitzer probably played no small part in engendering some bitterness... But it also does the thing that I used to love and can't stand anymore, which is to paint as realistic a world in which literary novelists have any sort of recognition or relevance.

The protagonist, Arthur Less, is an aging novelist, and a minor one by all accounts, who finds fans among the working class he encounters in different countries. It's writer porn. By writers and for writers.

There's also an under-developed thread that turns out, in the end, to be the big pay-off, which felt a bit pat and uninteresting.

I'm also a bit squeamish with male physical intimacy, and there's that throughout the book, though it's perfectly tasteful, but it probably didn't help its chances of winning me over.