(At one point Less is asked to “open” for a delayed, famous sci-fi author, whose fans interrupt Less’s attempts to read by chanting the other author’s name.) But with the wit and warmth that made readers fall in love with Less, Greer can find the absurd in everything. Writers may take special pleasure in Less Is Lost for the way it holds a mirror to the unique humiliations of their vocation.
In the midst of this crisis, the death of Less’s ex-lover throws the couple into financial distress, forcing Less to accept a series of improbable literary opportunities across the U.S. This is a story, we are told, of a crisis in their lives: how to keep choosing each other when the freshness of love has, if not soured, perhaps staled. In Less Is Lost, we return to Arthur Less, “our Minor American Novelist,” and his partner, Freddy Pelu, with whom he’s spent nine months of “unmarital bliss” on top of the nine years they’ve known each other. Andrew Sean Greer’s new novel performs an astonishing magic trick: It makes you forget the state of the world-or, more specifically, America.
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