Less

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Less
272 pages; Lee Boudreaux Books
Comic novels rarely nab literary prizes, but Andrew Sean Greer's Less, winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize in fiction, has irresistibly funny lines and just enough seriousness to make the jokes memorable. The title character is Arthur Less, a struggling gay novelist who is pondering his legacy as he pushes 50. In a desperate bid to shore up his reputation, Arthur travels the world to any panel or festival that will have him, a choice that only heightens his anxiety. In Italy, he suspects his work was "given to an unacknowledged genius of a poet ... who worked his mediocre English into breathtaking Italian." At a dinner in France, "an eel of panic wriggles through him as he searches the room for exits, but life has no exits." Arthur's stress in the literary world is at the root of every riff, but Less is moving to anyone who has weathered a devastating breakup or has worried, late at night, about his or her mortality. In other words: all of us.

— Mark Athitakis