Think of the funniest books you’ve ever read. Did any of them win literary awards? No? As the Washington Post points out, there has long been a “critical resistance to comic novels.” Until now. The 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to the laugh-out-loud novel Less by Andrew Sean Greer. Its premise, tone, and plot are unabashedly comedic. When the narrator asks “What could possibly go wrong?” in the first chapter, the reader already knows that a lot will go wrong for the protagonist, who is experiencing a run of bad luck. This novel is a pleasure: playful, beautiful, moving.
Greer, Andrew Sean. Less. Little, Brown and Co., 2017, p. 22.