The Vietri Project audiobook

This was one of my favorite reads in a long time. It's a beautiful take on a coming-of-age novel (and even a better, a later stage coming-of-age—I loved that the narrator was in her mid20s and still felt listless and without direction, something I think many of us can relate to). The author beautifully intertwines how we grapple with larger histories and horrors (on a country-wide scale) and how we grapple with our own personal histories. The core mystery keeps you turning pages, and the ending, although unexpected, is supremely satisfying (it has one of my favorite last lines in recent memory). Highly recommend for someone looking for a fun, lyrical read!

A gorgeously written, intimate, mesmerizing book. Who doesn’t love a quest? As the protagonist seeks out her mysterious Italian gentleman, The Vietri Project traverses fascinating, devastating vignettes of humanity, spanning early anti-communism pre-World War II to Europe’s refugee crisis following the recession. At the core of this phenomenal novel are big, existential questions, brought down to earth, and seen through the lens of a decidedly unsettled yet self aware young woman: Do our families define us? And what to do with our time here? It’s profound and beautiful and somehow still a page turner. Could not recommend more highly.

"I had a feeling of grasping that if I could only sift together all of the stories I had heart, if I could understand these stories as a part of one story, maybe, maybe I would get close. I wondered If I was trying to save myself, and I wondered if it would work." The Vietri Project begs the question of what makes your story, yours? Is it one you can write yourself or is it one that's made up of all the other layers of your life and stories of those in your orbit?What begins as a journey to find a mysterious scholar that ordered thousands of books by mail from the Berkley bookstore where she worked, Gabriele heads to Rome, the home of her mother and her maternal family, and ends up trying to find her own story. Lost in her late twenties, I found Gabriele's character to be incredibly relatable as she searched for some sort of meaning in her life, while resisting building any connections in her life deeply, out of fear of being 'tied down.' Though Gabriele's search is ostensibly for the mysterious Vietri, she ends up digging into both the city of Rome's many layers, and those of her family's. Fearful of eventually succumbing to mental illness like her mother, it isn't until she sees her massive Italian family as individuals that she begins to understand that she too can still be part of her family and be vastly different from what she believed she was predestined to become.

Giordano Vietri has ordered so so many books on so so many subjects from the store where Gabriele works. She's at a standstill in her life, she thinks. She's 25 and, like the protagonists of the recent genre of aimless millennial, looking for something- not clear what- but something and thus she chooses to go find Vietri. She doesn't find him immediately when she arrives in Italy but she does find other things, including her distant relations in Rome. Her quest is also dogged by her concern that she, like her institutionalized mother, has schizophrenia hanging over her. Although this skims the surface in spots, it's well written and thoughtful. No spoilers from me on Vietri. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. Excellent read that will appeal to fans of literary fiction.

All about wishful thinking in an odd unresolved path.

Booklist review to come.

The search for a man in Rome leads Gabriele abroad to not only find him but herself as well. This character-driven coming of age novel handled themes of mental health and family dynamics.Everything from the setting to the writing was beautiful. Her writing style was so nuanced and subtle which elevated the mystery elements of a novel. It’s almost existential in nature to make you wonder, what truly defines us? This isn’t a book with a conclusion necessarily, but emulates real life in that way where it just kind of continues on. She was in search of meaning and purpose, aren’t we all. Would recommend for those who enjoyed the writing styles of Vladimir and Leave the World Behind.

This intriguing story kept me waiting for the project to finish. The author did a great job weaving together the past and present, and the complicated relationships involved. I liked the unfolding of Italy's history as the story progressed.

This is a book for those who like the philosophical journeys of the narrators of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Anna Segher’s Transit.

Full disclosure: I know the author and received an ARC directly from her. That said, this book is magnificent. It's the type of novel you savour, getting lost in the language. DeRobertis-Theye's syntax reminds me of Virginia Woolf: long, clause-heavy, comma-laden thoughts to unravel. It's very precise, very elegant wordsmithing that no doubt changes meaning whenever you re-read it. I stayed up too late last night to finish the book; the final chapters were so gripping and I was so invested in not only the conclusion to the story, but the beautiful writing.

A 25-year-old Italian-American woman travels the world, ever on the move, driven by mistrust of her genetics, wariness of her mother’s Italian family, and an inability to craft a sense of self. Gabriele ends up in Rome, where she launches a quest to uncover the life of an elderly man, Giordano Vietri, who had ordered hundreds of esoteric books from the bookstore in Berkley where she worked. In the process, she hopes to give her own life a shape and purpose. Her research unveils the Italian past, including the fascist years and the campaign in Africa, the site of a massacre of civilians by Italian soldiers. At first, except for her cousin Andrea, Gabriele avoids her Italian relatives, whom she hasn’t seen for a decade. Her self-doubt focuses on a fear of being swallowed up by the large Italian family, “imagining the sticky ties that were already trying to pull me in” (126) -- and by the idée-fixe that she will share her mother’s fate in becoming schizophrenic in her twenties. It took me some time to engage with this novel, but as Gabriele uncovers the history of signor Vietri, entwined as it is with the life of a famous Italian artist, the Italian campaign in Africa, and prisoner of war camps in England, I could not put the novel down. I wondered along with the narrator, “What was one to do with all of this? Nothing could ever be only one thing in Rome, everything had already been touched by so many wars, traumas, millennia, the city was greedy for history…” (125-6) Although I was bothered by the many comma splices piled on top of each other, denying order to the writing, the style mirrors Gabriele’s inability to form goals or decide what she likes: “What was wrong with me that I’d now seen the better part of another continent and I couldn’t name a place I liked best” (93). The journalist, Roberto, whom she meets near the end of the novel, warns her about her obsessive research, “Of course. It’s something you have to learn as a journalist…When to let a story go” (186). Indeed, I wondered how the author would bring this story to an end, but in some way she does.

Truthfully, I was going to begin to read a different book, but when I tried to open it, my Kindle opened this book instead. Since I'm not one to argue with fate, I began reading. The story opens in Berkeley, California, where Gabriele is working at a bookstore. Because she is the newest person there, she is assigned to fill these large, cumbersome book orders that are ordered by a man named Vietri. Through the years Gabriele continues filling Vietri's eclectic orders, which arrive by typewritten letter every few months. When Gabriele finally leaves the bookstore and begins traveling, she find herself in Rome--the city where she sent all of Vietri's books. Coincidentally, Gabriele herself has dual citizenship and all of her mother's family still lives in Rome. Growing up, she visited every summer. Back now, for the first time she was a pre-teen, Gabriele sets out to find Vietri, a journey that leads her back to her family and makes her question who she is herself.The writing in this book is absolutely beautiful and the depictions of Rome and it's citizens is like taking a literary vacation. I learned so much about Italy and the country's role in WWWII--things I had never been curious about before but now having read this, I'm immensely curious. And those are the things a good book does; they transport you and teach you and make you think about things you never would have though about otherwise. I truly enjoyed this novel about coming of age and starting down the path to discover who you are. Definitely recommend.

After the first couple of chapters, I was not enjoying the book. I thought it was going to be one thing but very soon it became something else. I started to question it “so what?” “What is the purpose of this story?” but even though I was asking those questions and felt frustrated I would still pause and reflect on the words. There was always a quote to highlight and markdown, a reason to set the book down and spiral into reflection. It was easy to read and I found that I start to enjoy reading it. It isn’t a book for entertainment but thoughtful consumption. It is a novel that inspires reflection and makes you think about life and what it is and what it should be. I felt deep connections with Gabriele, while also feeling lots of frustration toward her. She is a complex character who highlights the complexity in humanity and ourselves. DeRobertis-Theye writes a subtly powerful novel about humanity and identity. She weaves a tale that focuses on community and isolation. It is about the past and present and the future of a country, of a family, of a man. The novel is about a quest that Gabriele begins, and she takes us on her quest while encouraging us to go on our quest. A beautifully written novel that will make you contemplate life.*I received a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.*