Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s debut novel, Glassworks, was was longlisted for the Center for Fiction and VCU Cabell First Novel Prizes and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Apple, and Good Housekeeping. Her new novel isMutual Interest. She is a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction and lives in Brooklyn with her partner.
At Electric Lit Wolfgang-Smith tagged eight "contemporary novels that use omniscient narrators in a fascinating way." One title on the list:
Less by Andrew Sean GreerRead about the other entries on the list.
It’s clear from the first page of Andrew Sean Greer’s Less that the omniscient voice is central to the novel. We hear the story from a teasing, cheeky, highly intrusive narrator—full of obvious affection for protagonist Arthur Less, but just as obviously maddened by Less’s flaws and foibles.
As the book progresses, though, the question of who, exactly, is talking becomes more and more impossible to ignore. Tossed-in first-person asides referencing in-universe interactions with Less feel at first like they’re in fizzy, startling conversation with those omniscient narrators of bygone centuries who might intermittently use the royal “we” and log their opinions on the characters’ decisions.
Over time, things develop in a different direction.
Reading Less for the first time, it begins to feel like Greer is engaged in a craft experiment, then a very unique type of mystery novel—and finally (at the risk of spoiling the surprise) what we realize to be a truly unique po-mo rom-com.
My reading and writing interests of the last several years have led me to see all omniscient narration as an expression of love, and for this case, Less may be Exhibit A.
Less is among Gnesis Villar's seven novels about the struggle of being a writer and Sarah Skilton's six novel novels about novelists.
--Marshal Zeringue
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