Haven’t we all just wanted to pack a single bag, buy a one-way ticket to somewhere, and see where the winds of change take us?
Part escapism, part therapy, Less by Andrew Sean Greer, is a journey through one man’s internal struggles of mediocrity, failure, and loneliness.
I had my first “mid-life crisis” at 28.
I was about to quit a job with nothing lined up in New York City. My Google search history was covered in research on an around-the-world trip on an open ticket. Who cares about money when you’re 28 and about to be unemployed?
Fast forward and that trip never happened.
I got fired instead.
Ran a marathon.
Fell in love.
Had a kid.
Now, here we are.
Seriously an Amazing Book
One Redditor wrote, “His prose is very lively, his metaphors are on point. It made me laugh out loud at times, and sometimes in an, ‘it's so sad it is funny,’ sort of way.”
What’s the cliche … It’s better to have love and lost than to have never loved at all?
Something like that, right?
It had to have been said by someone who only had scratches from their past loves and not scars and broken bones. The fact is: love hurts.
When I was prepping to buy my open-ended ticket, I had just ended a five-year tumultuous relationship that ended in screaming and a lease we couldn’t break. Welcome to NYC!
But along Less’ journey, he encounters strangers who press him to view his mediocrity and love life through a new lens.
Twenty years of anything with another person is a success.
Gary Shyeyngart said of Less, “Marvelously, unexpectedly, endearingly funny. A love story focused on the erroneous belief that the second half of life will pale in comparison to the first. Guess what? It won't!"
And that’s the rub as I enter my real mid-life crisis window.
There is a feeling that when you reach 40 - 45, that the best days are behind you.
I will say this of being 42, I don’t run as fast as I once did and sleeping and rolling over can be more painful than when I was a teenager.
But Less proves that love doesn’t have to end. It changes and it evolves.
But the past is not prose for the future. The past is preparation. The past is prelude.
And if Arthur Less taught me anything, it’s that life has a long exposure to the final print. But you can’t sit and watch it develop. You have to be in front of the camera, creating, being, living.
Want to read it for yourself? Pick up your copy of Less by Andrew Sean Greer. Prefer to purchase from Amazon?
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