LESS By Andrew Sean Greer | BOOK REVIEW

PUBLICATION YEAR: 2017 GENRE: Satirical Comedy, LGBT, Literary Fiction PAGE COUNT: 261 FORMAT: Paperback AVAILABLE  AT : amazon

 Lately I have been experimenting with my reading by trying out different genre, classics and critically acclaimed books.  So last month  I bought a couple of Pulitzer award winning novels in order to give it a try. Honestly  I went into this novel with middle to low expectations. The reason being-  I read another Pulitzer award winning novel  “ All The Light We Cannot See “ a little while back and could not even manage to finish it as i found it EXHAUSTING ( check out my post my experience reading All The Light We Cannot See) . Hence I was incredibly surprised at how much enjoyable this book turned out to be.

It is about a failed author Andrew Less who is about to turn 50. One day, he receives a wedding invitation from an ex boyfriend of 9 years who is engaged to someone else. Less doesn’t want to refuse this invitation as he doesn’t want to accept defeat nor does he want to attend the wedding  as that would create an awkward environment. So he comes up with this idea that he would get out of his city and attend all the literary events around the world for months. So he goes on in this journey from France to India, Germany to Japan where he does a bit of a self reflection thereby truly discovering himself.

The premise of this book revolves around the age old question of – Can you run away from your problems? In this book, Less tries to escape his problems but whether or not he is successful you have to find out by reading it. In a way, this book teaches us a few life lessons on self belief and self worth. But most importantly, it teaches us about love. In fact, towards the end of the book, I figured it was essentially a love story.

Andrew Less as a character was interesting. Although the book talks about his miserable unhappy life, the author never expected the readers to feel sympathy  . This was interesting as Andrew’s past  had certain elements of pain and heartbreak told in a fun and subtle way. I personally found him quite privileged – I mean he is an above average looking guy who has travelled practically everywhere and has been in relationships one after the other. But I am not going to lie -  towards  the end , I was rooting for him to find happiness and love .

The writing style was simple and filled with funny one-liners. At first, it was a slow read for me but soon I enjoyed every bit of it once I got an idea of where the story is heading. The reason why this book was slow to me at the beginning was because I was confused. There are frequent flashbacks in between the narration and the readers are not made aware of it properly. For instance, if the first paragraph talks about Less’s present , immediately in the next paragraph we go to his past .

It is fascinating how the author packed Less’s journey to the various cities and countries in a mere 250 pages book. Of all the countries he visited, I liked the parts of Germany, Mexico and India. It had some funny encounters and we learn some significant parts of Less’s past. I can’t really comment on the author’s description of other countries (because I have never been to those places ) , but I can say that the Indian portions were quite accurately described.

An excerpt from the book which I found funny and somewhat relatable where the author describes the tradition of prayer call announcements in India as the  Spiritual battle of the bands –
“It seems to begin before dawn with the Muslims, when a mosque ....announces in a lullaby voice, the morning call to prayer. Not to be outdone, the local Christians soon crank up pop-sounding hymns that last anywhere from one to three hours. This is followed by a cheerful , though over amplified  ,kazoo-like refrain from the Hindu temple... then comes a later call to prayer. Then the Christians decide to ring some bronze bells. And so on....in this way , the faiths alternate throughout the day , as at a music festival, growing louder and louder until, during the outright cacophony of sunset, the Muslims, who began the whole thing, declare victory by projecting not only the evening call to prayer but the prayer itself in its entirety.”

This book gave me a little “eat pray love” vibe. Although  I have not read the book, I have seen the movie and based on that, I found it a  little bit similar.

Overall it is a sweet little book which talks greatly about the importance of Love . It also deals with heartbreak and old age in a very light hearted way. I feel like this is a great book to start if you are intimidated by award winning literary fiction.👍

RATING -  🌕🌕🌕🌕 ( 4/5 )