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elbell1012's review
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I am unwell after finishing this
Content Warnings
Moderate: Infidelity and Grief
Minor: Body shaming, Cancer, Chronic illness, and Death of parent
daniellekat's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This was cute, charming, and witty but didn’t change my life. There were points that made me smile but ultimately I wasn’t invested in Arthur at all.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming and Infidelity
Moderate: Drug use and Homophobia
Minor: Sexual content and Medical content
vanadiumbean's review
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cancer, Cursing, Drug use, and Terminal illness
Minor: Body shaming, Cancer, Chronic illness, Homophobia, and Medical content
ppixxie's review
There's some weird race stuff in this (especially with how the main character talks in relation to the Mexican food he's exposed to??) and it was mostly just about this white man going through a mid-life crisis. It just wasn't for me!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, and Infidelity
Moderate: Body shaming, Terminal illness, and Xenophobia
rockyroadbutch's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
This is getting a one star review because it is a book, and I did, in fact, finish reading it (due to peer pressure). This book is awful. The main character is deeply unlikeable, does not grow, and thinks his life is awful, even though it isn’t. The level of detail is absurd and unnecessary, making this book about four times longer than it needs to be. It’s poorly written and thinks too highly of itself. It feels homophobic, despite being written by a gay man. It’s racist, sexist, classist, ableist, and fatphobic. I don’t know what the Pulitzer Prize people were on, but unless you have some, don’t read this.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcohol
Minor: Ableism, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Infidelity, Racism, Sexism, Terminal illness, Medical content, and Cultural appropriation
jojo_'s review
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Minor: Body shaming, Cancer, Homophobia, Infidelity, Grief, and Death of parent
kp_writ's review
adventurous
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Update: I went back to change the rating from 3.75 to 3.25 since there were so many things from this book that doesn't sit well with me.
If I had to describe this book in a single blurb, it would be this: Less is a better-written Eat, Pray, Love that explores the mid-life crisis of a heartbroken gay man who struggles to grapple with his age and relative mediocrity as a writer.
This book was sold to me as exploring a “new gay identity,” and I was thoroughly disappointed to find I’d be reading a main character who was a white cis middle-aged gay man with enough financial security to travel the world. While I understand gay identity hasn’t had very much time to explore life after 50 due to the AIDS crisis, this is the kind of queer demographic we already see in media. There is nothing new about the story of Arthur Less.
If I had to describe this book in a single blurb, it would be this: Less is a better-written Eat, Pray, Love that explores the mid-life crisis of a heartbroken gay man who struggles to grapple with his age and relative mediocrity as a writer.
This book was sold to me as exploring a “new gay identity,” and I was thoroughly disappointed to find I’d be reading a main character who was a white cis middle-aged gay man with enough financial security to travel the world. While I understand gay identity hasn’t had very much time to explore life after 50 due to the AIDS crisis, this is the kind of queer demographic we already see in media. There is nothing new about the story of Arthur Less.
That said, this book is beautifully written, and the characters are—for the most part—quite charming. The few qualms I did have with the characters and the narration I would attribute to the author instead: inclusion of historic events as jokes in poor taste, a colonist mindset that seeps into place or people or cultural descriptions, the sexualization of a literal three-year-old girl by calling her a “temptress.” Miscommunication is also overused as a plot device in this novel, and the ending proved frustrating to me for this reason. The depiction of relationships overall felt very messy to me—some in endearing ways, and others not.
I think my biggest qualm with this novel is that it continues to normalize large age gaps within gay relationships. Though it did add to some of the drama, these age gaps were entirely unnecessary to the grand scheme of the plot, in my opinion, and contributed to the feeling that this book is in general outdated. Age gaps feel a less acceptable now than they were years ago, which is why it continuously frustrated me to see this book—published in 2017! —continue the old narratives of gay relationships and representation. I think this was the kind of novel that would have been much more fitting of a time period in the 90s or even early 2000s, as opposed to 2017. The few attempts at digging into discourse that would’ve made the novel feel more contemporary went unresolved and were largely unsatisfying. Nothing about this book shook my way of being.
The second major flaw in this book was that it was clearly trying to be funny (an interview with the author revealed the story was originally much darker before he added some lighter elements and twisted it into a so-called comedy), but the humor almost always fell flat for me. It relied heavily on humiliation and irony (much like Arthur Less’s own attempts at fixing his novel in the last few chapters of the book), but an ironic book isn’t necessarily a funny one. These attempts at humor were honestly skippable, sometimes detracting from an otherwise beautifully written novel.
Overall, this was a solid book, especially if one forgets how recently it was published, isn't primed by the idea that it aims to portray a "new gay identity," and doesn’t have as much discomfort for age gaps as I do.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism and Infidelity
Minor: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Cursing, Fatphobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, and Grief