Less - by Andrew Sean Greer

Billed as a comic novel, I have to admit it took a while for me to adjust to and appreciate the gentle humour which runs through the book.  Worse it took me to about about halfway through before I started to feel any sympathy with the protagonist, Arthur Less.  Possibly it's my cultural distance from almost every character in the novel - or maybe it just isn't as witty as the critics have made out.

Less is a mildly successful novelist on a cobbled together world tour devised purely to get him out of the country for the wedding of his former partner.

Only while in Paris and cornered at a party by a Nemesis, who explains Less's lack of popularity to him as being down to Less being "a bad gay" did I really start to warm to him.  I suspect most if us feel that for much of our lives we've pretty bad at whatever it is we are supposed to be.  From that point I rooted for the poor guy, in his one suit (when his luggage hadn't gone astray).

In the end it's a decent novel of middle-age and search, and yearning and love.  But worthy of a Pulitzer?  Must have been a quiet year for US publishing.