Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer * * * * *
Villa Coco takes place at a slightly crumbling villa in rural Tuscany, where a young American named Geoffrey arrives to take a job working for a ninety two year old Baronessa. He has been hired as an archivist, or technically as an “adjutant,” and his supposed job is to catalogue the contents of the villa before Christmas. There is art, furniture, books, antiques, and all sorts of other things accumulated over a very long and rather eventful life. Geoffrey comes from a very different world. His parents are scientists, he has grown up surrounded by people who value concrete answers and precision, and he arrives in Italy expecting something resembling an actual professional archival job. He also speaks basically no Italian.
Instead, he gets Coco.
The Baronessa, Lisabetta, known to everyone as Coco, is ninety two years old and an absolute character. She has apparently had an enormous number of love affairs throughout her life, although she calls them her “stories,” and she has accumulated an equally extraordinary collection of friends, acquaintances, employees, relatives, former lovers, and people whose exact relationship to her is not always entirely clear. Geoffrey's actual name is barely relevant for most of the book because Coco decides to call him Giovedì, Italian for Thursday, essentially making him her “man Thursday.” From then on, Giovedì is pulled into a world that operates according to rules he does not understand.
And honestly, neither did I half the time.
He is supposedly there to catalogue the villa, but very little of his time seems to be spent actually cataloguing anything. Instead, there is a marten somewhere around the house that everyone is trying to get rid of. There are problems with the villa itself. There are endless visitors. There are strange errands and stranger stories. There is an olive harvest. There are grapes to be picked and crushed. People appear and disappear, plans change, Coco wants something completely different from what she wanted five minutes ago, and Geoffrey gradually stops being simply the American archivist who has been hired to document the contents of the house. He becomes part of the strange little ecosystem of Villa Coco.
Normally, this is not the kind of book I read at all. I tend to want an adventure, a mystery, or at least a strong plot pulling me forward. Villa Coco is much more character driven. Things certainly happen, sometimes extremely bizarre things, but the real pleasure of the novel is spending time with these people. Somehow, despite this being so far outside my usual reading preferences, I completely fell in love with them.
I especially loved Coco. She is ridiculous and exasperating and funny, but there is also something incredibly warm about her. The stories surrounding her can go from almost completely insane to surprisingly touching, and sometimes I genuinely had no idea where the book was going. There were moments when my reaction was basically, what on earth are these people doing now? But that became part of the charm. The villa feels like its own little universe, where normal logic has been suspended and Geoffrey simply has to learn how to function within it.
That contrast between Geoffrey and Coco is also what makes the book work so well. Geoffrey arrives wanting order. Coco represents chaos. He wants a clearly defined job with clearly defined responsibilities. Villa Coco gives him martens, harvests, eccentric aristocrats, complicated relationships, mysterious objects, endless stories, and an employer who seems determined to turn his life upside down. He starts out completely out of his element, but little by little he changes. He learns Italian. He becomes useful in ways that have nothing to do with archival work. He gets involved in the lives of the people around him. By the end, he is no longer simply observing this strange Italian world from the outside.
The Italian setting was also a huge part of why I enjoyed the book. I am already slightly obsessed with Italy, so obviously putting me in a Tuscan villa for several months is an excellent start. I also had the extra fun of listening to the audiobook and understanding the Italian dialogue, which made the experience even better for me. More importantly, though, the Italian characters actually felt recognisable to me. Greer has spent a lot of time in Italy, and it shows. The behaviour, the conversations, the attitude towards life and the general organised chaos felt familiar rather than like someone simply decorating an American story with Tuscan scenery.
The more I listened, the more I could actually see this book as a film or a miniseries. The villa itself, the Tuscan countryside, the olive harvest, the grapes, the art, the constant parade of strange visitors, and above all Coco would translate beautifully to the screen. I would love to see an actress get the chance to play the Baronessa because she is exactly the sort of character who could completely dominate every scene she is in. And considering how wild the ending gets, there would certainly be plenty for an adaptation to work with.
I also came away from Villa Coco wanting to read more Andrew Sean Greer, which I definitely was not expecting when I started it. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Less, so I may give that one a try next, especially since Italy also plays a part in that story. If nothing else, Villa Coco has made me curious to see whether it was this particular combination of characters and setting that worked for me or whether I simply like Greer's writing.
I highly recommend Villa Coco, particularly if you enjoy character driven books and stories about eccentric groups of people who gradually become their own little family. But I would also recommend giving it a chance even if, like me, this is not normally the sort of book you reach for. It is funny, strange, warm, occasionally completely absurd, and unlike most of what I usually read.
I had a great time with it, and I still cannot entirely explain why. Maybe that is actually the best compliment I can give it. I went to Villa Coco expecting a story about an American cataloguing art in Tuscany, and somewhere between the martens, the olive harvest, Coco's “stories,” and the general insanity of life at the villa, I stopped caring about the catalogue entirely.
I just wanted to stay at Villa Coco a little longer.
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