Less is a comic, bittersweet novel about a failing writer who travels the world to avoid his ex-boyfriend's wedding. Arthur Less doesn't want to go to Freddy Pelu's wedding, nor does he want to decline and sit at home. So instead, he takes up some chance invitations to travel: teaching in Berlin, an award ceremony in Italy, a not-quite-writers' retreat in India. He turns fifty and fails to avoid looking back on his past, all the while having minor travel mishaps and wondering if he still has a love story to come.

This is a touching novel about someone who doesn't quite realise how their life appears to others. Arthur's journey pokes fun at Americans travelling and at the things writers who aren't quite the writers they want to be end up doing. At the same time, the novel is a kind of bittersweet love story, about someone who can see his two main relationships in the past and can't quite escape them. The style is distinctive and Greer uses a not-quite-present narrator to frame Less' life, a detail which makes sense by the end.

Less is a witty and charming novel that feels like a twentieth-century book updated slightly for the twenty-first. Arthur Less is the kind of slightly sad comic protagonist that you hope things will end up well for.

I wonder how many novels that win the Pulitzer Prize Have a passage about a man winning the self same prize. There must be a statistic somewhere. The book is full of meta commentary like this, both accidental and deliberate.
Less is a the story of Arthur Less, a disappointed man just about to turn 50. Like many people in his position, he is weighing up his life and finding it wanting. Less is a loser, he thinks. We are told he is “a bad gay.” Most of all, Arthur Less is sad.
Initially, there is reason to believe those things. Life is something that happens to Less. He is incredibly passive. His long term boyfriend has left him to get married. His contemporary, Carlos, is a property magnate. He is, apparently, a middling novelist whose publisher has passed on his latest book.
Less receives an invitation for the wedding. Instead of buying an outfit and a hat he cobbles together a mostly free round the world trip made up of tawdry promotional opportunities. A talk here, a lecture series there, a trip to Japan to eat special meals. At this point you start to see what Less does not. He has quite a nice life. Most people don't get to travel the world on someone else's dime. His is a privileged existence.
Each, very funny, chapter takes place in a different country. Less is unaware of the fact that people really like him. For a so called failure, he gets a lot of male attention. At some point he unexpectedly wins a prize. In another chapter he gives a talk in a nightclub where lots of people faint. He is a huge hit. Less gives a lecture series in very bad German, and is greatly loved. It all washes over him.
In Paris a fellow writer tells him he is “a good writer but a bad gay” because all his stories are somewhat downbeat. He doesn't write anything positive about being gay, because he is so passive about his own sexuality. Faced with having to change his book, Less has a realisation. Instead of being about a middle-aged gay man feeling sorry for himself, he should rewrite him as an unknowing fool getting into all sorts of scrapes.
As Less travels, he is avoiding the wedding he has missed. Friends keep bringing it up meaningfully. He keeps avoiding the subject. In a meeting with Carlos, Less is told he “has won.” Less, as usual, has no idea what is going on. This lack of knowledge has a great emotional payout at the end of the book. It is unexpectedly joyful, and elevates the book to another level. I did not expect Less to be so life affirming.