Villa Coco
A Novel
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
ADJUTANT DESIRED for owner of modest country house. Collection of books, objects, art such as a Picasso to be cataloged before Christmas. Duties: dictation, pruning, shopping, hunting martens.
So begins the tale of our young man, an aspiring archivist determined to begin a “serious” life after an undistinguished undergraduate career notable mainly for poor choices in love. Taking up residence in the Italian countryside, he becomes the all-purpose assistant to the Baronessa, known to her friends as Coco, a defiantly youthful and naturally flamboyant woman of ninety-two. Amid a chaotic and colorful milieu of gin-swilling princesses, incomprehensible handymen, roaming boar hunters, nuns, and other local wildlife, our young man does his best to catalog the villa’s extensive collection of art and antiques—although he notices that things seem to go missing from right under his nose.
Despite himself, he tumbles into an affair with a married man, complicating his future plans considerably. And when the Baronessa loses someone close to her, he becomes an unwitting accomplice in the acceleration of Coco’s great and final plan: to locate the love of her life and be reunited before it’s too late.
Told with the signature wit, charm, and humanity that made Less an international phenomenon, Villa Coco is a dazzling, sun-soaked ode to life itself, a meditation on how seriously we ought to take ourselves, and a bawdy Mediterranean ballad about becoming who we’ve always wanted to be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This charming tale of an innocent abroad from Pulitzer winner Greer (Less) doubles as a love letter to Italy. The narrator, Geoffrey, a 21-year-old American college student, lands a job as an archivist for an eccentric Baronessa in Tuscany. Arriving in the fall after his graduation, he's immediately swept into the magical if unsettling world of his 92-year-old employer. To Geoffrey, the villa "look both like the British Museum and like a child's bedroom, filled with beloved trash and treasures." Soon, the Baronessa has him doing everything but cataloging the villa's contents. Ten hours a day he trims the rose bushes; searches for books and magazines; makes appointments with doctors, masseurs, and veterinarians; and listens to the Baronessa's endless fantastical tales. Everyone in her life has a story, the young man learns: "They lived in a sealed world of comic-strip logic, and within that world, all schemes ended as happily as a monkey's life in Zanzibar." As the months pass, Geoffrey absorbs Italian culture, breaks his vow to avoid romantic entanglements, and faces some tough choices for his future. Throughout, Greer breathes life into the Baronessa and her world and captures its appeal to Geoffrey, fashioning the novel into a box of treasures. This light and airy bildungsroman is great fun.
