Ms. Hen reviews Less

Less

Andrew Sean Greer

Little, Brown Company

2017

Ms. Hen read this because she happened to find it at a Little Free Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was planning on going to Cambridge, so she looked online to see if there are any Little Free Libraries there, and of course, there are. She picked this book because she had heard that it won the Pulitzer Prize this year. She didn’t realize that she had read another book by this author, THE IMPOSSIBLE LIVES OF GRETA WELLS, which she adored.

At first, it was hard for Ms. Hen to get into this novel. She didn’t know what to think of it. She had just finished reading THE HELP, which was long and serious, and not funny at all, so she was not prepared for how to read LESS. This novel is funny in the way that it looks at people and analyzes them and picks them apart. This novel is charming and unique.

Less is about a moderately successful gay writer, Arthur Less, who is about to turn fifty, and decides to turn down a wedding invitation from his ex-lover, Freddy, because he believes it would be traumatic and embarrassing. Instead, he accepts invites from all around the world to literary related events. He travels to Mexico, Italy, Germany, France, Morocco, India, and Japan, all while thinking of Freddy and his new husband.

LESS is a self-deprecating look at a man who thinks he is a loser, but is not. Arthur Less is a writer who has loved and been loved, published a few books, and some people admire them, and some people do not. The novel that Arthur Less writes that gets rejected by his published is about a gay man walking around San Francisco thinking about his life, and Less calls it a gay ULYSSES. He changes the novel to make it more of a humorous journey, which is similar to LESS.

When Ms. Hen read this, she couldn’t help thinking of the essay writer, David Sedaris, who writes with a similar style and subject matter. Ms. Hen read ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY while she was in France. Ms. Hen also thinks LESS has echoes of MOBY DICK, in the way that Arthur Less keeps chasing his great white whale, which Ms. Hen decided is his career, and also love.

There is one mention of chickens, when Less is in India driving down the road, looking at things, “the endless series of shops, as if made from one continuous concrete barrier, painted at intervals with different signs advertising chickens and medicine…” Ms. Hen likes to find the chickens when she is reading; it’s like a game for her. Some books have myriads of chickens, and some have none.

Ms. Hen thinks that this is one of the most original novels she has read. She has not read anything quite like it before. LESS is funny and bittersweet and adventurous and romantic. She believes that more humor should exist in the world, because if we can laugh, especially at ourselves, it makes life a lot more bearable.

Ms. Hen reviews The Help

The Help

Kathryn Stockett

Penguin Books

2009

Ms. Hen decided to read this book because she found it at the Little Free Library near where she lives, and there weren’t a lot of other good books the day she went. She also read this because she thinks it goes along with the theme of the last book she read, THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, the subject matter being about racism in the South. This novel, however, is about the 1960s, and the problems that the maids in Jackson Mississippi had with their bosses and the people in the town.

This novel is about a group of young white women in Jackson, Mississippi and their maids. The Junior League meets for bridge at each other’s houses and they have a discussion about the fact that the help should not use the bathrooms because they are not sanitary. Aibileen, Elizabeth’s maid, is ashamed that the women think she is dirty. Skeeter, one of the white women, who is unmarried, is upset about the fact that her friends don’t treat their help well. Skeeter is the editor of the newsletter for the league, and Hilly, the president, insists that she put the piece about the “home sanitation,” in the newsletter, but Skeeter doesn’t want to do that. Skeeter has moral quandaries with the League and considers writing about the women who work for her friends.

Skeeter and Aibileen start to write a collection of stories about what it’s like for the maids in Jackson to work for their bosses. Other women join in, and Skeeter gets the book ready for publication. The town is full of problems; white people don’t regard the black people as equal to them. Aibileen tries to teach the little girl under her care what is right and wrong, but she doesn’t know if the girl will remember when she grows up.

Ms. Hen liked this book; she thought it was charming, but it was a little too charming in places. The racism seems sanitized, and too easy to deal with. This novel was written by a white woman, but she writes in the voice of black women. Ms. Hen found it hard to believe that these women’s voices were accurate. Ms. Hen has read Alice Walker’s THE COLOR PURPLE, and she thinks Ms. Walker does a superior job of writing in African American voices compared to Ms. Stockett. Ms. Hen understands that it’s important to stretch as a writer, but she thinks that some Southern African Americans might be offended by the way the book is written.  

Another aspect of this novel that Ms. Hen found hard to manage was its length. The book is too long, and it seemed to take eons to get to the point.  Ms. Hen thinks that a lot of bookclubish books are that way, they meander and wander and take forever to read. Sometimes a novel is worth spending a lot of time reading, if it’s a high quality book, but Ms. Hen didn’t think this is the best book she has read.

Even though Ms. Hen didn’t think this was the best novel, there are a lot of chickens and hens throughout the book. She finds that a lot of books about rural areas have plenty of chickens. One of the maids, Minny thinks while she fries chicken, “I watch the chicken sizzle, try to forget she’s there. Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.” Later on, the two women have an argument about the chicken they are eating for lunch. “ 'Take the breast,’ she says, her blue eyes bugging out at me. ‘Go ahead.’ ‘I eat the leg and the thigh,’ I say, taking them from the plate.” Miss Celia wants to be nice to Minny to let her have the breast, but Minnie doesn’t want it. She thinks that Miss Celia doesn’t know how things are supposed to be.

Even though Ms. Hen didn’t love this book, there are moments of brilliance and hilarity. The novel took too long and was difficult to read in places. She is going to try to steer clear of the book club books for a while. She prefers living on the edge.