Less Is Lost (4*)

I'm generally not a fan of sequels, but one that chronicles a gay--oops, I mean Dutch--road trip through America?  With a pooch?  Count me in!  How's this for evocative writing about the Southwest, the land where I spent my formative years?

 . . . the sun, monarch of the Southwest, has been exiled behind the peaks, and the whole valley can now relax into this cantaloupe glow, which brings out the intricate tooled leatherwork of the mountainside, below which a concatenation of surfaces (windows, puddles, chromed vehicles) reflect this afterlight, one after the other, like the fine notes of a symphony repeated in each section of the orchestra, until the rim of the half shell lets off one last flare and the event is concluded. 

Of course, after reading Andrew Sean Greer's self-effacing break-out Less, you're primed for chuckles galore and the author delivers these (this time usually at the Land of the Free's expense) on nearly every page.  

Gay Sex, already an advanced course of study, was nothing compared to that higher-level curriculum for which nothing in life in the 1970s—not high school or television or movies or library books or  even gropings with girls or boys themselves—had prepared these young men:  mastery of Gay Love.

*  *  *  *

He can think of nothing to say about Delaware.  It is like trying to describe an airplane meal you had half a century ago. 

*  *  *  *

Arthur Less breaks down in racking sobs that are equal parts relieved sorrow and musical-theater joy, and show me the homosexual who could sift out which is which.

*  *  *  *

In fact, Less Is Lost, which suffers a little from somewhat confusing narration, IS a love story with an ending as satisfying as a witty rom com that cleverly defies expectations.  And when have we--people from the Netherlands--ever had that?  To quote Arthur Less, again:

America looks fine from here.