2.5 stars ✨

I finished Less by Andrew Sean Greer at 5:30 in the morning, just hours before a book club meeting, and my first thought was, “This won the Pulitzer Prize?” 🤨

As a gay man, I did appreciate what the book tries to engage with. Arthur Less’s story touches on very real anxieties within the gay community, especially around aging, desirability, and the quiet panic of feeling left behind. His dynamic with younger partners and his fear of becoming irrelevant felt honest in concept, even if the execution didn’t fully land for me. The problem is that the novel never digs as deep as it thinks it does. Instead of a meaningful exploration of identity, insecurity, and love, the book reads more like a muted, queer (and utterly boring) version of Eat Pray Love. Less travels the world to avoid attending his ex’s wedding, moving from one location to the next, but much of it feels like flipping through a polished travel brochure. We get surface-level impressions of places like Paris, Berlin, and Morocco, but very little and inconsistent emotional or thematic weight attached to them. The settings change, but Less doesn’t seem to meaningfully change with them on most occasions.

I also felt that the overall narrative direction was frustratingly haphazard. I kept waiting for the moment where everything clicks. Where he reflects, grows, spirals in an interesting way, anything. Instead, it’s just 272 pages of a man politely avoiding his problems while occasionally being self-aware about it. Which is almost worse. Like, you know you’re the problem and we’re still doing this in your extended avoidance tour? Arthur Less as a protagonist also didn’t fully land for me. I understand he’s meant to be awkward, passive, and a little pathetic in a tragicomic way. However, it was exhausting reading about a privileged middle-aged man globe-trotting through an emotional crisis, where he ends up absorbing surprisingly little. Sir, you went around the world and came back with no self development?

Project Hail Mary completely pulled me out of a reading slump. This is one of the few sci fi novels in a long time that kept me consistently engaged from start to finish, and that alone says a lot.

What really works here is how Andy Weir makes Dr. Ryland Grace feel approachable. He is not some untouchable genius. He is awkward, funny, panicked, and very human in the way he processes impossible situations. Then, there is the relationship at the center of the book. Watching two completely different species learn to communicate, build trust, and ultimately depend on each other is easily the heart of the novel. It turns what could have been a standard survival story into something more hopeful. It becomes less about saving humanity alone and more about connection, cooperation, and friendship across literal galaxies. And look, this book is giving me damn hope considering how my current government wouldn’t even cooperate in working with scientists across the globe! I needed this book to get me through to the next election!!! 😭

The science is also a major highlight. Weir has a talent for making complex ideas feel accessible and, more importantly, interesting. You feel like you are solving problems alongside Grace. That said, there are moments where the explanations dip a little too far into “ELI5” territory. It occasionally breaks immersion when the tone shifts from natural problem solving to overly simplified exposition, even if Weir’s intention is to make Grace’s internalized thought continue as an educator. The humor lands well for the most part, and if you listen to the audiobook narrated by Ray Porter, it elevates the experience significantly. His delivery adds personality and timing that make the dialogue and internal monologue feel much more alive.

My main issue ultimately comes down to Andy Weir’s writing style. It’s functional and effective at moving the plot, but it rarely reaches beyond that. Outside of the central relationship, the character work often feels thin and underdeveloped. To be blunt, Weir struggles to fully realize his characters, and this is especially noticeable with his female characters. Take Eva Stratt, for example. She comes across less as a fully formed individual and more as an exaggerated archetype. Her hyper blunt, relentlessly forceful authority figure persona borders on caricature. While it serves the pacing and keeps the plot moving efficiently, it sacrifices nuance and emotional depth in the process. This issue extends to the rest of the Hail Mary crew as well. Many of them feel defined by a single dominant trait or stereotype rather than a layered identity. Grace himself, despite being in an extraordinary and isolating situation, often defaults to an “aw shucks” tone that feels oddly unchanged given the gravity of his circumstances.