What’s keeping Stephen Boylan up at night this month?

Poor Arthur Less. The self-proclaimed ‘midlist homosexual’ of Andrew Sean Greer’s latest novel is getting dumped on from all sides. His ex-boyfriend of nine years, Freddy, is about to marry someone else, he’s just been let go by his publisher and, perhaps most tragically of all, he’s about to turn 50. Feeling unable to either refuse or accept the invitation to Freddy’s wedding, he instead opts for a Grand Tour of sorts.

He travels, for various reasons, to New York (author interview), Mexico (‘Una noche con Arthur Less’), Germany (teaching secondment), Morocco (friend-of-a-friend’s birthday) and, fi nally, Japan (cookery review), but it’s the story’s trips to Italy and France that are the most successful. Poking fun at the mid-tier literary awards circuit, Less fi nds himself nominated for a prestigious Italian prize that is, he discovers, ultimately judged by secondary school students. In Paris, he’s offered a later flight and by chance meets a married Spanish man; their encounter is beautifully touching, in a yearning, wistful Before Sunrise type of way.

Less is a charming and talented man (and an engaging protagonist) but, like so many of us, he takes all praise with a pinch of salt and every criticism straight to heart. His ability to bed attractive and eligible men is prodigious, and praise for his literary work is in plentiful supply. However he is also destined to suff er the unenviable fate of many a novelist; he is primarily remembered for his début work. He’s shocked when a friend (and rival) tells him he’s not part of the ‘gay canon’ because he’s a ‘bad gay’ and he doesn’t treat any of his queer characters at all sympathetically.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Little, Brown)

Winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Less may well be less weighty than other novels that have won that award in the past, but it’s no less accomplished. Reminiscent of David Nicholls’ wonderful Us, it’s also not too much of a leap to imagine this is what David Sedaris might come up with should he turn his hand to fi ction. If you love Less, pick up Greer’s The Story of a Marriage for another hugely rewarding, although altogether more serious, read.

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The House on Half Moon Street by Alex Reeve (Corsair)

One of the most atmospheric books I’ve read in a long time, Alex Reeve’s début novel, The House on Half Moon Street, is a taut and gripping tale. Having left home at the age of 15, Leo Stanhope arrives in Victorian London where he works as a coroner’s assistant. When Maria, the woman he loves, turns up dead and he becomes implicated in the murder, he turns amateur detective in order to solve the case. So far so straightforward, except that Leo was actually born Charlotte, thus introducing us to a brilliantly realised trans sleuth that, hopefully, has many more adventures ahead of him.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundathi Roy (Penguin)

Arundathi Roy won the Booker Prize back in 1997 with her stunning début novel The God of Small Things. After her win, Roy left the world of fi ction behind, preferring instead to dedicate her time to activism and writing non-fi ction. She burst back onto the Booker longlist last year with her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, now released in paperback.

Focussing on Anjum, a trans woman, or hijra, amidst a wide cast of characters, the book is set against the ever-present sectarian violence between India and Pakistan.