A journey to find a mysterious book collector takes a bookseller to Rome in Nicola DeRobertis-Theye's The Vietri Project, an intimate portrait of one woman's attempt to outrun fear and find purpose in her life.
Gabriele knows there's only a 10% chance of inheriting her mother's schizophrenia, but her continued fear "prevented me from feeling that my life was real, that it belonged to me." Uprooting her quiet life to travel the world, she finds herself drawn to Rome, the birthplace of her mother and home to Giordano Vietri, an eccentric book collector who ordered thousands of esoteric titles from Gabriele's former employer. Her spontaneous attempt to find Vietri quickly becomes a committed pursuit as her paltry findings send her down an ever-deepening rabbit hole through military records, World War II memoirs, modern Italian history and her own relationship with Rome and her family.
The Vietri Project is an absorbing, character-driven novel steeped in astute personal and historical insight. DeRobertis-Theye's debut skillfully demonstrates how the intricate root system of history both creates and lives within the present-day world, coexisting even as perception of the past shifts over time. Gabriele's pursuit of Vietry--an unconscious attempt to find purpose in the narrative of her own life--brings with it perceptive reflections on her complicated family, Italian culture and her fear of the unknowable future. A raw portrait of an independent woman unmoored in her own life, paired with prescient observations of Italian culture and history, make this book a rich and rewarding experience. --Jennifer Oleinik, freelance writer and editor