Gabriele’s life has been on hold up until now. Sure, she’s got a college degree, a steady boyfriend, and had a decent (if low-paying) job at a bookstore. But when that steady boyfriend suddenly proposes marriage at the beginning of The Vietri Project, by Nicola DeRobertis-Theye, something becomes unmoored in Gabriele. She dumps the boyfriend and follows a wild hair to Rome. This novel is a slow journey not just to Rome but also to Gabriele finally realizing who she wants to be.
Years ago, right about when she turned twenty-five, Gabriele’s mother developed schizophrenia. It takes her some time to figure it out, but Gabriele finally recognizes that she’s been avoiding big commitments until she hits her own twenty-fifth birthday. The surprise marriage proposal that Gabriele doesn’t want to accept sends her out of the apartment she was sharing with her boyfriend and into a strange project: to find the Signor Vietri of Rome who ordered hundreds of strange, obscure books from the shop where she used to work. All Gabriele can remember is his address. She’s never directly corresponded with Signor Vietri, let alone talked to him over the phone. But she just has to know what Vietri wanted with all those books.
The descriptions of Vietri’s reading list hooked me on The Vietri Project. So it was surprising to learn—after the first chapter or so—that this novel was not about a book mystery. Instead, we see Gabriele arrive in Rome, fail to find Signor Vietri, and instead end up reconnecting with her mother’s family and learning to live beyond age twenty-five. I was a little stunned by this literary bait-and-switch. I was a little irked. (I really wanted to know what Vietri was up to with all those books of the dead and spiritualist books.) Once I let got of my expectations and let Gabriele follow her inclinations, I started to enjoy her quirky journey.
The Vietri Project is unlike most journey-of-discovery stories I’ve ever read. The plot sneaks up on you, because I’m fairly sure that Gabriele didn’t know what she was doing when she climbed on a plane for Italy. Because I had no clue what Gabriele was going to do next, I felt myself slowing down and looking around the scenery like the protagonist was doing. Reading The Vietri Project was almost like going on a bookish vacation myself.