Less Is Lost (Arthur Less #2)

by Andrew Sean Greer

I am ashamed to say that Arthur Less is not comfortable with Southern hail-fellow-well-met friendliness. Perhaps because he grew up on the Eastern Seaboard, where affection was kept in the cupboard with the hurricane lamps, or perhaps it was merely because his parents, including a loving mother who, like a famous actor omitting from a script lines she cannot pronounce, simply could not say “I love you.” Less used to tease her about this; he knew she loved him, knew this beyond any doubt, but he would end each phone call with “I love you, Mom,” which was like trying to get a Buckingham Palace guard to smile because she was temperamentally incapable of answering anything but “Goodbye, son.”