Un love at first sight: when Marisol and Angelo meet by chance one evening on the public beach in Rimini the spark between them strikes instantly, they both feel they have met someone special, with whom they can discover themselves and show who they really are. She is in her early twenties, a young university student who grew up counting only on the affection of her father Gianni, with whom she has a very strong, almost exclusive relationship. Apparently she is calm, but He has a wound in his heart that has never closed.
A Sunflower scented love
He is a little older, a thirty-year-old who has found not only a job in photography, but a way to express himself, loves pointing his lens at people to try to guess something that goes beyond appearances. He too has had disappointing relationships behind him, yet his outlook is still open and profoundly positive.
Listening to the destiny that brought them together, they begin a story made of small gestures, post it notes left under a Ferris wheel, handwritten letters, a first kiss that is just a promise for the future. AND that pendant with a golden sunflower that Marisol has always worn around her neck will make them discover a mysterious and strong bondwhich can help them overcome even the first problems and misunderstandings.
Love with the scent of sunflower by Gabriele Mauro, Garzanti288 pages, €18.60
Gabriele Mauro’s debut
The author of the book, Gabriele Mauroborn in 1994, born in Salento and transplanted to Rimini a few years ago, he started writing by putting poems and thoughts that came naturally to him online, and in a short time he attracted the attention of many people who recognized themselves in his stories full of simple and pure emotions. A real community of faithful and passionate readers. This is his first novel to hit bookstores.
Reading his book you are a little surprised: a young man who is capable of speaking openly about feelings and showing his fragilities is still rare, even though gender differences have officially narrowed. Where did this story come from?
I think I was born into a generation that is a bit in the midst of change, already with the younger kids I seem to see a big gap, everything is moving very quickly. In reality, what inspired me was the love story of my parents, born in the late ’60s, a marriage that withstood every difficulty: my mother chose to leave her homeland and follow my father, a soldier, often changing homes and cities, dedicating herself to him and to us children, without ever giving up. For us, family is the most important thing and starting from their example, I wanted to bring attention to the concept of love, putting it back at the centre, giving it back the right value, which today seems to me to be getting lost.
Gabriele Mauro was born in Ugento, in 1994, and today lives in Rimini. It has thousands of followers on Instagram.
Do you have your own personal definition of love?
I continue to look for it, but I still haven’t found a word that seems definitive and complete to me: I have tried to describe it in all its declinations, dissecting the differences. I started from the filial one, between Marisol and Gianni. I put a bit of my character into him, negative aspects, such as jealousy. Then I moved on to the romantic side, seeing not only the happy moments but also the crisis ones, where it is necessary to confront each other in order to overcome problems together. Let’s say that Angelo is somewhat my idea of an ideal man and Marisol that of my soul mate. Which strangely, however, I encountered in life only after putting it down in black and white on the page, when I had already written the novel…
Have you always been such a dreamer?
I was a very lonely child and then teenager, partly due to our constant moving, it wasn’t easy to make friends, I always had few. Above all, I observed others, even from afar, and starting from a gesture, from a small detail, I imagined stories.
Ever since then did you think of being a writer?
Absolutely not, it was never in my plans. Immediately after finishing high school, I chose to fulfill my father’s wish, who wanted me to follow in his footsteps. I took the competition and spent four years in the Armed Forces: useful for maturing, but also for understanding that it wasn’t my path. I got out and found a job in public administration, which I still do today.
When did you encounter writing?
It’s strange, but in reality it happened when, scrolling through the various spaces of the internet every evening, I realized that in other people’s words I couldn’t find the ones I wanted to read, the things I had in my head without really being able to express them. So I forced myself to do it on my own and opened a somewhat hidden profile, baptizing it “The usual nights”, without exposing myself with my name, starting to post reflections, thoughts, little poems. In a short time it became a passion for me, or rather a necessity and to my surprise the number of people who followed me multiplied, many shared the need to talk in a simple and direct way about profound feelings. Little by little I discovered myself a little, also publishing videos on Instagram, and only in 2023 did I take the decisive step, creating my official profile ( @gabrielescrive ), which today has more than 150,000 readers. I’m not too fond of the word follower. In fact, they were the ones who suggested I dedicate myself to something longer, a real novel.
How did your family react to this choice?
They support me, even if at the beginning it was a bit of a shock for my father, a rather strict soldier, as public exposure isn’t his thing.
Do you already have a new project you’re working on?
Let’s say that I already have some ideas in my drawer: perhaps these characters of mine will return to the scene, but I haven’t yet decided whether I will look to the past or to the future.