Michelle Dsouza
This was my first Andrew Sean Greer book, and I will be back for more.
It took me a while to get into it, and I want to be honest about that. Part I is slow, and at the time I did not understand why. Looking back, the slowness is deliberate. Greer uses Part I to lay every thread he pays off later, so that by Part II the immersion feels earned rather than granted. The book asks for your patience up front and then rewards it.
Anyone who knows me knows I have a soft spot for senior characters, and Lisabetta, the ninety-two-year-old Baronessa known as Coco, had my heart from the start. Her stories, not all of them true, are entirely hers. She is "as uncontrollable and changeable as the wind, she is also contrarily constant." Greer builds her with such specificity that she stops reading like a character and starts reading like someone you met.
The book moves through many characters, and I understand how that could frustrate a reader trying to track them. The prose is what holds it together. The writing is slow, and the slowness is the point. Slow, cozy, and vivid. Reading Villa Coco feels like a Sunday afternoon in the cool autumn sunshine, warm hot chocolate in hand, at peace with everything around you, even though the story itself runs on chaos. Greer holds calm and chaos in the same hand, and that balance is the real achievement of the book.
The narrator goes by many names, never his own. That anonymity worked for me. By the time I was immersed, the names stopped mattering and who these people were took over. The first-person voice reads like a confidential memoir, which pulls you close and makes his coming-of-age feel like something you are inside of rather than watching.
This is not a book for everyone. It is slow, and it branches so many times it risks leaving you behind. That branching is what hooked me. All our lives are made of a thousand branches, each one shaping the life we end up living, and the book is built to mirror that. By Part II, I was fully immersed in this tiny Tuscan village, the sights, the smells, the imagery, all of it written well enough that I felt like a silent observer of these people's everyday lives. Some moments run over the top, but with a ninety-two-year-old self-proclaimed Baronessa at the center, you expect nothing less.
Do not come for a plot, because there is not one. Come for the verbal swordplay between the young narrator and Coco, and the anecdotes they trade, which show off Greer's sharp observational humor. This is a book about life. About the choices you make, the paths you take, and the people you love and live alongside.
"'Lisabetta knows the trick to life,' she said, 'is knowing what you want.'"
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.
This was my first Andrew Sean Greer book, and I will be back for more.
It took me a while to get into it, and I want to be honest about that. Part I is slow, and at the time I did not understand why. Looking back, the slowness is deliberate. Greer uses Part I to lay every thread he pays off later, so that by Part II the immersion feels earned rather than granted. The book asks for your patience up front and then rewards it.
Anyone who knows me knows I have a soft spot for senior characters, and Lisabetta, the ninety-two-year-old Baronessa known as Coco, had my heart from the start. Her stories, not all of them true, are entirely hers. She is "as uncontrollable and changeable as the wind, she is also contrarily constant." Greer builds her with such specificity that she stops reading like a character and starts reading like someone you met.
The book moves through many characters, and I understand how that could frustrate a reader trying to track them. The prose is what holds it together. The writing is slow, and the slowness is the point. Slow, cozy, and vivid. Reading Villa Coco feels like a Sunday afternoon in the cool autumn sunshine, warm hot chocolate in hand, at peace with everything around you, even though the story itself runs on chaos. Greer holds calm and chaos in the same hand, and that balance is the real achievement of the book.
The narrator goes by many names, never his own. That anonymity worked for me. By the time I was immersed, the names stopped mattering and who these people were took over. The first-person voice reads like a confidential memoir, which pulls you close and makes his coming-of-age feel like something you are inside of rather than watching.
This is not a book for everyone. It is slow, and it branches so many times it risks leaving you behind. That branching is what hooked me. All our lives are made of a thousand branches, each one shaping the life we end up living, and the book is built to mirror that. By Part II, I was fully immersed in this tiny Tuscan village, the sights, the smells, the imagery, all of it written well enough that I felt like a silent observer of these people's everyday lives. Some moments run over the top, but with a ninety-two-year-old self-proclaimed Baronessa at the center, you expect nothing less.
Do not come for a plot, because there is not one. Come for the verbal swordplay between the young narrator and Coco, and the anecdotes they trade, which show off Greer's sharp observational humor. This is a book about life. About the choices you make, the paths you take, and the people you love and live alongside.
"'Lisabetta knows the trick to life,' she said, 'is knowing what you want.'"
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.