Less (Arthur Less, #1)

by Andrew Sean Greer

The lights awake the room again, and no one has been murdered. A movie screen begins to unroll noisily from the ceiling like a mad relative wandering downstairs and has to be sent back into hiding.

He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you.

A poet, a playwright, a scholar, and a gay black man who left the overt racism of America for the soigné racism of France.

He supposes he is meant to experience humility; by now, he is well acquainted with humility. It is the one piece of luggage he has not lost.