Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer review, fun in the Tuscan sun
Article excerpt
Andrew Sean Greer, the Pulitzer Prize winner behind Less, returns with Villa Coco, a sunlit romp through Italian self-discovery. The novel drops a protagonist into Tuscan paradise with a simple prompt: look into a place that needs someone. What unfolds is a breezy tangle of fish-out-of-water comedy, romantic entanglement, and the messy business of figuring out who you actually are when you stop running. Greer spent two years in Italy, and it shows, the setting practically glows with texture and charm. It's the kind of book that feels like an escape, but with enough emotional teeth to linger after you've turned the final page.
The Pulitzer-winning author of Less has crafted a breezy confection of fish-out-of-water wit, insecurity and self-discovery set in an Italian paradise
‘There’s a place in Italy in need of someone. Why don’t you look into that?” Inspired by his two-year stint directing a writers’ residency, the Santa Maddalena Foundation outside Florence, with these words American author Andrew Sean Greer launches a hapless, clueless innocent into the Tuscan hills and the embrace of its eccentric aristocracy, in the person of the eponymous Coco, Baronessa Lisabetta.
Variously known as “our young man”, Gio and Giovedi, Villa Coco’s narrator is here to fill the post of “adjutant” for the Baronessa. His duties include pruning roses, emptying drains, hunting the Baronessa’s mortal enemy, the pine marten, and cataloguing the dilapidated Villa Coco’s contents. Among the camel saddles and hat racks, he is assured, lurk priceless works of art, including a Picasso and a Botticelli. He joins a staff consisting of a Sri Lankan cook, her husband and a Lebanese factotum; they share in the sisyphean task of keeping Villa Coco going, and the Baronessa out of harm’s way.
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