Less

 

By Andrew Sean Greer

Pulitzer Prize winning novel of 2018.

Arthur Less is minor author who is soon to turn fifty and who feels like a failure at everything but especially at life and work. He has a lot of baggage from two of the most important relationships in his life. First was Robert, who was a married man but who fell deeply for young, handsome Arthur. Robert was a famous and successful poet and a Pulitzer Prize winner. That relationship lasted for many years but eventually Arthur felt bored and eventually moved on to Freddy. That relationship also ended and Freddy has invited Arthur to attend his wedding to another person. Arthur needs a good excuse not to attend so he accepts several invitations to lectures overseas that will take him from his home in California to Mexico, Italy, Germany, France, India, Morocco and Japan. 

Even though Arthur views himself as a failure, his travels introduce him to lots of new people and he learns that he is not quite the loser he has been picturing himself to be, despite some of the mistakes and misadventures he has on his travels.

The book started out slow and when I started reading it, I didn't know the main character was a gay man. I can't say I find the romantic intrigues of homosexuals particularly interesting, whether male or female. I set the book aside for several weeks after starting it. I did finally pick it back up and, as I got further into it, I started to enjoy it more and more. It is mildly funny and Arthur's dim view of himself doesn't improve until he reaches the end of his travels and realizes what he actually accomplished. Upon hearing that his old lover Robert has had a stroke, Arthur heads back to California with a better sense of himself and of his past relationships. To quote from the novel, it turns out that, "happiness is not bullshit."

According to Google's AI, Less won the Pulitzer because 'it offered a witty, tender and deeply humane exploration of aging, middle-class heartbreak and queer identity. The [Pulitzer] board praised the novel as a "scintillating satire" that expertly balances broad comedy with poignant reflections on the human heart.'

Here is a review of the novel by Kirkus Reviews.

The Virgin of Small Plains

 

By Nancy Pickard

During a bad snowstorm, a rancher (who is also the sheriff) and his sons are out in the weather dealing with their cattle when they find the nude body of a young woman laying in the snow in their cow pasture. There's blood on the snow and it appears she has been sexually assaulted. The sheriff doesn't know who she is but his two teenage sons do but they say nothing.

The younger boy stays home, per his father's orders, but the older teen goes with his father when they take her body to the doctor's office into nearby small town. 

Meanwhile, the doctor's teenage daughter has a visitor in her bedroom, Mitch, the handsome son of the local judge. Abby and Mitch have been making out and Abby has decided she is ready to go all the way. Problem is neither teen has any condoms. Abby knows her dad has condoms in a closet off the exam room. So Mitch sneaks downstairs, looking for the condoms. As he is poking around downstairs, the sheriff drives up to the doctor's house and Mitch ducks into the supply office to hide. He was able to peer through a crack at the edge of the door and saw the dead girl being carried into the exam room. And then Mitch sees something so shocking and unexpected that he actually gasps in horror. But fortunately he isn't heard and he is able to sneak away later. He was so shocked but what he had seen, he didn't go back upstairs to Abby's room and he ran out into the snowy night without his coat or shoes. And he never saw Abby again or returned back his home town until about seventeen years later. 

The girl is a stranger to the area and is never identified. Her body is buried and a tombstone placed on her grave. Oddly, a legend sprung up about the girl, that a visit to her tomb could heal the sick and the trouble. She became known at the Virgin of Small Plains.

Abby never got over Mitch leaving town without talking to her or telling her what happened that night. She didn't know his parents had quickly hustled him out of the town when he told them what he had seen happen in the doctor's office. The judge informed his son that the doctor and the sheriff were denying what Mitch claimed he had seen. Further, they threatened to throw the blame for the girl's death on Mitch. So to keep their son safe, they were sending Mitch to school far away.

The story moves from the teenage days of Abby, Mitch and the sheriff's two teenage sons to seventeen years later. In all that time, the girl's death has never been solved. Abby has remained single as have the sheriff's sons, Patrick and Rex. Mitch has never returned home, not even for his own mother's funeral.

One day at the cemetery, Abby happens to encounter the now former sheriff's wife who is visiting the grave of the unknown girl. She knows about the stories of healings and her husband has been suffering greatly from the pain of arthiritis. So she is asking the Virgin to help her husband feel better. She and Abby begin casually chatting and the night the Virgin was found dead comes up and some of the things the sheriff's wife says stirs something in Abby. After the other woman leaves, Abby makes a promise to the Virgin to find out who she was.

But sometimes it's better to let sleeping dogs lie. Or in this case sleeping Virgins.

This was a very interesting mystery story. There are several suspects and several secrets surrounding the dead girl's time in the town. The main suspects are the three teenage boys, Mitch, Pat and Rex. It turns out that all three boys were involved with girl in the months before she died. And all three boys knew who she was and where she came from. But they never spoke up about it. Seventeen years later though, times are changing in Small Plains. The Virgin has gained some internet fame and people are coming to town to visit her grave and ask for her blessing and healing. Interest is rising and questions are being asked. And Mitch has finally come home and locals can't figure out what he is up to, including Abby, whose heart was broken when he left without a word so long ago.

Here is a review of the novel by Publishers Clearing House.