Gelato
The point of writing a novel titled Love and Gelato without having any imagery related to gelato seems questionable at best. Thankfully, this is not that novel. “A bell-shaped woman waved at us from behind the counter and I made my way to the front. This place had a huge selection. Mountains of colorful gelato garnished with little bits of fruit or chocolate curls were piled high in metal dishes, and every single one of them looked like they had the ability to improve my day by about nine hundred percent. Chocolate, fruit, nuts, pistachio . . . How was I going to choose?” Over the course of the narrative, eating gelato for the first time will be referred to as a life-altering experience and the greatest thing that will ever happen to a person. It is also identified as one of the two things that people who come to Italy stay around for. The other thing is hinted at in the title. The imagery is deceptively informative. The shape of the woman behind the counter subtly indicates the long-term effects of gelato consumption while the allusion to mood improvement suggests a hidden reason behind the impulse toward overconsumption. Gelato is a lot like love: the selection is enormous, the choice is difficult, and it can make you feel great in the short term as well as become a heavy burden over time.
Gelato or Not Gelato
The young female protagonist meets two young men of particular interest during her visit to Italy. One is gelato and the other is not. “Thomas was tall and thin with dark brown hair and thick eyebrows, and he had this strong-jaw thing going on that I’d heard about but never actually witnessed. And his lips. They were pretty much ruining any chance I had of forming words…He had a British accent. A British. Accent…I shook his hand, doing my best to stay upright. Apparently weak in the knees was a real thing.” This imagery certainly seems like the kind of description one would reserve for the guy who is gelato. All the traditional hallmarks are there: the loss of the ability to consciously form words and stand up straight. Then there is the whole tall, handsome and British characterization going on with Thomas. The question at hand is whether this is the human equivalent of gelato or is it the other guy. How is she possibly going to choose?
It was Only a Kiss
The use of imagery in the first kiss is especially effective because the content wouldn’t be the same if delivered differently. The manic passion of the kiss is conveyed more viscerally with the use of the dashes linking the words together. And the separation of words that break them apart into individual lines brings that passion to a freezing halt in a way that could not be as efficiently accomplished in any other way.
Scenes from Italian Movies
References to movies are made throughout the novel by the narrator. Most of the references are to classic movies or foreign films. “The street was lined with clothing stores and little coffee shops and restaurants, and people kept calling to one another from windows and cars. Halfway down the street, a horn beeped politely and everyone cleared out of the street to make way for an entire family crowded onto a scooter. There was even a string of laundry hanging between two buildings, a billowy red housedress flapping right in the middle of it. Any second now a director was going to jump out and yell, Cut!” To the uninitiated, it might seem as though there is nothing in this imagery that is specific to an “Italian movie.” Some might suggest that scene described above could take place in France or Greece or Germany or even parts of London. Perhaps, but this description isn’t alluding to a real-life scene. It is a recreation of a scene from many movies and the imagery is going to be familiar to those who have seen those films.
