Less was such an enjoyable read - I really loved every page, and I loved the way the story was structured with (Arthur) Less trying to outrun the marriage of his former boyfriend by traveling to all these different countries. My favorite happened to be Germany, because Less suffers from a similar delusion as me - that he's very good at speaking a foreign language, although everyone responds to him with some amount of alarm of not understanding him. There's even a line that perfectly encapsulates my own philosophy on speaking a foreign language. "The key to speaking a new language,"she told them, "is to be bold instead of perfect." That led to another bit that just slayed me: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 only use the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you. There are some men who have never been kissed like that. There are some men who discover, after Arthur Less, that they never will be again.Swoon!
Another part that I thought about for a long time was this:
... As an areligious WASP, he had no idea what to do about death. Two thousand years of flaming Viking boats and Celtic rites and Irish wakes and Puritan worship and Unitarian hymns, and still he was left with nothing.It is such an interesting fact how difficult it is to process a death. You'd think it would be more of our muscle memory after our long histories.
Much to my surprise, I found myself reading a love story - I haven't really read one in such a long time, and it was an absolute delight. Mini Spoiler - I loved how the third person narrator slowly revealed his own personality and became a mystery and then suddenly it became very obvious who he was.
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