Andrew Sean Greer

And instead of it seems like it's going to be a romance of some kind, but it isn't exactly.

And you're right, a group of people who amuse each other, are bound to each other, are so peculiar that they could only stand each other.

And I think the protagonist, Jovedi, looks around and thinks like, well, everyone, the Baronessa just loves the most eccentric people and then realizes, I must be one as well.

Yes.

I mean, it makes it much more fun to write, I have to say.

It's harder because you have to... If I wrote a memoir of my time in rural Tuscany, it might be a lot of complaining.

But to write a novel about it is something entirely different.

I have to process it for the reader and for myself.

And now my memory of that time is that it was lovely because now it's been turned into this fictional story.

And also it makes me every day, some foolish thing I do, instead of...

complaining to myself about it or to friends, I make it into a funny story so that when I meet them at the bar, I'm like, you can't believe what happened today.

And it's a good story instead of just moaning.

And part of that is getting older and realizing that you're more pleasant to be around if you have

She's 100 years old now.

Okay.

Certainly she was the first person I gave a copy of it to and I told her I was writing about this time and that it was a love letter to her and to my time in Tuscany, which was my entire purpose in my presentation.

And she's not reading right now, but friends have read...

Everyone there has read it.

Copies have been stolen.

I've had to send new copies.