Too often, our standards of literary greatness exclude comic novels — which is usually fine because there are so few great comic novels. But you should make more room for “Less.” In the opening pages, a writer named Arthur Less is depressed about turning 49. His anxiety about aging has been exacerbated by news that his former boyfriend is about to get married to a younger man. Confronted with the prospect of sitting through their wedding, Less decides to send his regrets and flee. He blindly accepts the invitations he’s received from around the world: a hodgepodge of teaching assignments, retreats and readings. Those gigs provide the novel’s structure — a different country for each chapter — and Greer is brilliantly funny about the awkwardness that awaits a traveling writer of less repute. Unfailingly polite, hypersensitive to the risk of boring anyone, Less remains congenial throughout, but “the tragicomic business of being alive is getting to him.” This is the comedy of disappointment distilled to a sweet elixir.
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