Wow! AD Long should be so proud of her debut novel. It is such a well written book on a terribly difficult subject. I felt the same gut wrenching vibes as when I read A Little Life. I liked this book better because I felt it tackled each of the family members involvement contributing to the addiction. Support, guilt, despair, loneliness, rejection, all the things that go with each of these feelings were explored. She did an excellent job describing the life of an addiction and the addicted. It was book that was hard to put down. ( )

When we first meet Evann, he is in the middle of a drug-induced crisis. Memories and flashbacks help explain how he got to this place of desperation. Most of the book is one flashback after another, mostly surrounding the verbal and sometime physical abuse of his mother, a self-centered woman who never wanted him as her first born. Evann's present life is all about excessive drug use and maintaining an image of normalcy for his oblivious family. It isn't hard to do. His parents barely notice his existence and his sister, Nicole, is too caught up in being the golden child. Evann is so lost in the sauce he doesn't have a present-day personality to speak of. His childhood self is innocent, charming, introverted. As a budding artist he shows all the signs of becoming extremely talented. Of course, no one takes this talent seriously. Certainly not, compared to Nicole's talent as a ballerina.
Towards the end of Less Than, as a means of explanation maybe, Bruce and Ann, Evann's parents get chapters to justify their lack of love for Evann. Even Nicole tells her story. Their secrets are a little overdramatic and exaggerated, but they prove a point: all families have ghosts; ghosts that could push a good kid into drug addiction. Because of Evann's lack of adult personality, I wasn't as vested in his outcome as I should have been. ( )

Evann has grown up realizing that he was not really wanted by his mother. Ann was expecting a girl and didn't get what she wanted. There was a constant feeling by Evann of feeling "Less Than" anything to his mom. He starts taking medications to forget the treatment. The medications take him to a place where the memories fade. He has a true artistic talent that enters him into University for Arts, but he continues to abuse the drugs and starts to really lapse at school. This leads to him living on the streets, doing his best to get the next fix any way that he can. This is a mind-blowing look at addiction from the users standpoint. Brush off your thoughts about what an addict is and open your mind to this viewpoint. Excellent awakening for me. ( )