What could be more serious than Europe?

By Simon Demetriou

In Andrew Sean Greer’s last novel, the lesson learned is that ‘up close [the world] makes no sense’. That was a valuable lesson in a wonderfully witty book. In Villa Coco, the lesson the narrator learns is that ‘it was the work of the speaker… to extract and refine, from the admixed events of love and life, the comedy’. Greer’s done it again, because with Villa Coco, he shimmeringly depicts the absurdity of life through an ostentatious fiction brought home with tenderness...