My favorite thing about this feature is that I’m totally allowed to be tardy to the party, and yep, you better believe this one flew all the way under my radar until it won the Pulitzer. Even then, despite buying it, I didn’t read it until my book club made it the pick for our June meeting, but I finally get there, and I loved it! It’s got self-deprecating humor, unpredictable romance, a fun mix of settings (the main character is traveling the world), an older protagonist than we usually get to see (he’s on the verge of his 50th birthday), and best of all (for me personally), the author is a hugely relatable midlist author. So, if you, like me, are so late to jump on the train that even the Pulitzer committee beat you to it, hopefully this well convince you to get on board!

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.

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