Title: Less

Author: Andrew Sean Greer

Publisher: Back Bay Books 2018

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 272

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love

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 book club selection this month and I was disappointed in this one. I was interested in the story of a man lost traveling the world to find himself. I wasn’t a huge fan of Arthur. Too much of a sad sack for my tastes. And then the interludes of his history felt like they dragged the storyline down. I kept feeling like I was being pulled completely out of the storyline. Overall this book really fell like a slog to me. I just didn’t want to finish it at all. Definitely not for me.

Next up on the TBR pile: