There’s slightly less on the minor humiliations of the ‘Minor American Novelist’, which I think is wise, avoiding the in-jokiness of anecdotes about readings and author Q and As. It’s a sequel for those who are already sold, referencing and reprising what made the original so winning. That’s why this is a book for ‘Lessologists’ (a coinage of Freddy’s).

Various others, and their words and actions, resurface along the way. Freddy – back with Arthur but also quite cross with him about the Shack and other matters – narrates, somewhere between tenderness and exasperation, as he did Less. Robert Brownburn, Arthur’s former lover, poet and Pulitzer-winner (how neat!), remains a powerful presence, and absence. Mandern, the eccentric sci-fi novelist with a fanatical following, coerces Less into a quixotic road trip in an RV called Rosina. ‘Some business lunch! I took you to a restaurant.’ He’s trying to avoid losing the ‘Shack’, his San Francisco home, by cashing in on an unexpected flurry of paid work: writing a profile, visiting a theatre troupe, judging a literary prize and delivering a lecture tour. In Less is Lost, Arthur has a stranger and scarier destination for a West Coast homosexual: America’s heartlands. In it, Arthur Less – a tentative, faded Battenberg blond-and-pink man, around whom embarrassments and misunderstandings coalesce – scuttled across the world to avoid facing his 50th birthday and the wedding of his long-time lover Freddy to someone else, both imminent. Less was hilarious and humane: a hymn to second acts. First things first: you need to have read Less, Greer’s Pulitzer-winning first outing for his creation, to appreciate this slighter but equally charming sequel. Get ready for more of Less: Andrew Sean Greer’s hapless novelist is back on the road.

Andrew sean greer less sequel