Less (Arthur Less, #1)

by Andrew Sean Greer

“How did they even know I was gay?” He asked this from his front porch, wearing a kimono.

The Russian novelist pulls his lush eyebrows together like the parts of a modular sofa.

We know there’s no love of your life. Love isn’t terrifying like that. It’s walking the fucking dog so the other one can sleep in, it’s doing taxes, it’s cleaning the bathroom without hard feelings. It’s having an ally in life. It’s not fire, it’s not lightning.

bringing Less back to the time at Disney World when his mother led him and his sister to a whimsical ride based on The Wind in the Willows—a ride that turned out to be a knuckle-whitening rattletrap wellspring of trauma.

He recalls an aquarium he visited as a boy, where, after enjoying a sea turtle that swam breaststroke like a dotty old aunt, he encountered a jellyfish, a pink frothing brainless negligeed monster pulsing in the water, and thought with a sob: We are not in this together.

Less is grateful the signs are clear because the GPS, after giving crisp, stern directions to the highway, becomes drunk on its own power outside the city limits, then gives out completely and places Arthur Less in the Sea of Japan.

“Take the next exit.” The GPS, that rum-drunk snoozing captain, has awakened and is back in command.

The restaurant sits on a rock above the river and is very old and water stained in ways that would delight a painter and trouble a contractor;