It's difficult to put my feeling into words for this book, so I'll just try to keep it succinct.

I have a feeling Arthur Less was written to be a likable character, but I did not like him. As another character in the book put it so well (intentional, no doubt), ..."A white middle aged American man walking around with his white middle aged American sorrows? ...sorry to tell you this, it's a little hard to feel sorry for a guy like that."

Not to sound too "not like other gays" but I am confident that this book resonates deeply with gay men who are not me. The way partying, sleeping around with married men, and having painful relationships with insufferable writers is described, you'd think it was a universal experience, and I find the theme of "aging gay man coming to terms with being unlovable" to be a tired, boring conversation. All of the characters of substance in this book frankly, felt insufferable. But the numerous negative traits of the characters didn't seem to be written as character flaws. They were written as if that's just how people are. Incredibly harsh criticism of one's friends, infidelity, fake-deep monologuing on the birth and death of love and relationships...these are all written about as simple realities for many of the featured characters, which led me to the same question over and over again. Why the hell is Arthur friends with all of these terrible people, and what sad, sad circumstances made him feel that this is how normal people function?

But with all of that being said, I found the plot to be absolutely charming. I loved Arthur's journey and his varied experiences. I loved the introspection he had in each of the situations he found himself for each country. I even liked the overarching love story. But, I do feel like there were missed opportunities to tie his direct experiences in each country back to some sort of character development. I don't feel like Arthur actually GREW during the story. From Arthur's perspective, he goes on a long international trip to avoid a wedding and comes back when he finds out his ex boyfriend had a stroke, conveniently at the end of his trip. I wish I could have seen a bit more of a change in him.

This was a fun story if you make an effort to focus on just the story and to ignore how lousy all of the people seem to be.