Review by New York Times Review
ANATOMY OF TERROR: From the Death of bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State, by AN Soufan. (Norton, $18.95.) Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who was a supervisor of counterterrorism programs after the Sept. 11 attacks, offers a grim view of jihadism since Osama bin Laden's death in 2011. He writes, "the cancer of bin Ladenism has metastasized across the Middle East and North Africa and beyond, carried by even more virulent vectors." LESS, by Andrew Sean Greer. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $15.99.) To avoid his former lover's wedding, the middling novelist Arthur Less decides to accept every literary invitation he receives, cobbling together a multicountry journey from New York City to Japan. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize this year, and is the next selection for the PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club. THE FAR AWAY BROTHERS: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, by Lauren Markham. (Broadway, $16.) Markham follows Ernesto and Raúl, twins who decide at age 17 to make the perilous journey from El Salvador to Oakland, Calif. Our critic, Jennifer Senior, praised the book for making "vibrantly real an issue that some see only as theoretical, illuminating aspects of the immigrant experience normally hidden from view." MOTHER LAND, by Paul Theroux. (Mariner/Eamon Dolan/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $15.99.) A fiendishly nasty Cape Cod matriarch - called only Mother - outwardly seems like a pillar of her community, but on her homestead, she lobs insults and pits her seven children against one another. The novel can occasionally read like a long exercise in score-settling; regardless, our reviewer, Stephen King, praised the author's "fabulously nasty sense of humor," writing, "Theroux ends up assassinating all of his characters, but I still enjoyed the play." COMING TO MY SENSES: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, by Alice Waters with Cristina Mueller and Bob Carrau. (Potter, $17.) The founder of Chez Panisse reflects on her formation as a sensualist: meanderings in France that informed her interest in excellent food; Berkeley, Calif., in the 1960s; and the aesthetic demarcation between her culinary approach and what she derided as "hippies' style of health food." SING, UNBURIED, SING, by Jesmyn Ward. (Scribner, $17.) In a follow-up to her 2011 novel "Salvage the Bones," Ward tells the story of Jojo and his young sister, who travel with their drug-addicted mother to pick up their father from the Mississippi State Penitentiary. This lyrical and richly empathetic novel won the National Book Award, and was named one of the Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2017.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 3, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* While such luminaries as Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, and John Irving have praised Greer's previous novels, including The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells (2013), Less is perhaps his finest yet. It follows Arthur Less, a novelist whose longtime boyfriend is getting married. In order to avoid the ceremony, Less accepts invitations to all the literary events he has been invited to. The subsequent tale moves across not only space from San Francisco to New York, Mexico, Italy, Germany, France, India, and Japan but also time, as Less looks back at his life as he approaches his fiftieth birthday. Once on the periphery of an artistic movement, the Russian River School, and involved with one of the founders, Less now exploits this connection to enable his journey.Through numerous flashbacks, Greer signals his debt to Proust (something he shares with Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010) and paints a comic yet moving picture of an American abroad. As Greer explores Less' lovelorn memories, he also playfully mocks the often ludicrous nature of the publishing industry, as does Percival Everett in his acerbic Erasure (2001). Less is a wondrous achievement, deserving an even larger audience than Greer's best-selling The Confessions of Max Tivoli (2004).--Moran, Alexander Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Greer's wistful new novel, a middle-aged writer accepts literary invitations around the world-making his way from San Francisco to New York, Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India, and Japan-so that he will have an excuse not to attend the wedding of a long-time lover. Arthur Less is not known primarily for his own work but for his lengthy romantic association with a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, an older man who was married to a woman when their liaison began, and he believes himself to be the butt of many cosmic jokes and that he is "less than" in most equations. This is partially proven true, but not entirely. And even in Less's mediocrity, when aided by a certain amount of serendipity (and displayed by the author with ironic humor), he affects people. Greer (The Confessions of Max Tivoli), an O'Henry-winning author, writes beautifully, but his occasionally Faulknerian sentences are unnecessary. He is entirely successful, though, in the authorial sleights of hand that make the narrator fade into the background-only to have an identity revealed at the end in a wonderful surprise. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Associates. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This hilarious and touching novel follows Arthur Less, a gay man, as he travels around the world in order to avoid attending the wedding of his former lover. The wedding invitation was the final realization for Arthur that he never should have broken up with Freddy, and as Arthur's 50th birthday approaches, he realizes he may be alone forever. Arthur is a novelist, and although his publisher turned down his latest work, he is engaged in literary activities such as receiving an award, speaking at a conference, and teaching writing in such locations as New York City, Mexico, and Germany. He also travels to Morocco and rides a camel out into the desert. All along the way, there are wacky scenes of wrong directions taken, comic misunderstandings, and language barriers left standing. VERDICT Greer (The Confessions of Max Tivoli; The Impossible Life of Greta Wells) is both clever and compassionate as he steers Arthur through this rough period in his life, and while the book focuses on gay men and their relationships, the search for love and meaning is universal. [See Prepub Alert, 1/28/17.]-James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Facing his erstwhile boyfriend's wedding to another man, his 50th birthday, and his publisher's rejection of his latest manuscript, a miserable midlist novelist heads for the airport.When it comes to the literary canon, Arthur Less knows he is "as superfluous as the extra a in quaalude," but he does get the odd invitationto interview a more successful author, to receive an obscure prize, to tour French provincial libraries, that sort of thing. So rather than stay in San Francisco and be humiliated when his younger man of nine years' standing marries someone else (he can't bear to attend, nor can he bear to stay home), he puts together a patchwork busman's holiday that will take him to Paris, Morocco, Berlin, Southern India, and Japan. Of course, anything that can go wrong doesfrom falling out a window to having his favorite suit eaten by a stray dog, and as far as Less runs, he will not escape the fact that he really did lose the love of his life. Meanwhile, there's no way to stop that dreaded birthday, which he sees as the definitive end of a rather extended youth: "It's like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won't ever be back." Yet even this conversation occurs in the midst of a make-out session with a handsome Spanish stranger on a balcony at a party in Parishinting that there may be steaks and coffee on the other side. Upping the tension of this literary picaresque is the fact that the story is told by a mysterious narrator whose identity and role in Less' future is not revealed until the final pages. Seasoned novelist Greer (The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, 2013, etc.) clearly knows whereof he speaks and has lived to joke about it. Nonstop puns on the character's surname aside, this is a very funny and occasionally wise book. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
