Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer ("A great chronicler of our times." —San Francisco Chronicle) showcases his wit, sophistication and deep knowledge of focaccia in this magical and madcap tale of a young man who takes an unspecified job with a charismatic elderly baronessa at her crumbling villa in the Tuscan hills. Heartsore, broke and directionless, our young man (the chosen moniker of Villa Coco's narrator) takes a job in the Italian countryside as the all-purpose assistant (technically, the employment ad asked for "adjutant") to Lisabetta, known to her friends as Coco, a strong-willed, wealthy widow of great local renown. Technically, our young man is an archivist, charged with cataloguing Coco’s extensive and eclectic collection of art and artifacts, but what are his actual duties? He is charged with ridding the house of a marten, whatever that is, locating the antediluvian septic system, entertaining an endless carousel of guests (from bohemian painters to elderly princesses to handsome nephews), attending a funeral in order to make off with the urn and not inadvertently sabotaging Coco's great and final plan—to locate the lost love of her life and be reunited before it’s too late. Told with the signature wit, insight and deeply felt humanity that made Less an international phenomenon, Villa Coco is a dazzling, sun-soaked ode to life itself—a romp through a youthfully self-constructed emotional obstacle course, a meditation on what we give and take from others and a bawdy Mediterranean ballad about becoming who you’ve always wanted to be.
Author
Andrew Sean Greer (born 1970) is an American novelist and short story writer. He is the bestselling author of The Story of a Marriage, which The New York Times has called an “inspired, lyrical novel,” and The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was named one of the best books of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle and received a California Book Award. The child of two scientists, Greer studied writing with Robert Coover and Edmund White at Brown University, where he was the commencement speaker at his own graduation, where his unrehearsed remarks, critiquing Brown's admissions policies, caused a semi-riot. After years in New York working as a chauffeur, theater tech, television extra and unsuccessful writer, he moved to Missoula, Montana, where he received his Master of Fine Arts from The University of Montana, from where he soon moved to Seattle and two years later to San Francisco where he now lives. He is currently a fellow at the New York Public Library Cullman Center. He is an identical twin. While in San Francisco, he began to publish in magazines before releasing a collection of his stories, How It Was for Me. His stories have appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, The New Yorker and other national publications, and have been anthologized most recently in The Book of Other People, and The PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories 2009. His first novel, The Path of Minor Planets, was published in 2001.
