this Italian graphic novel contains three different tales of romance. Each one is written to resemble a different geometric relationship between lines and curves: being parallel, being asymptotic, and being tangent. 
As I have not yet been able to obtain a copy of this book, I really don't have much to say about it. I suspect the (potential) lovers in the parallel tale never meet, which is a sort of mathematical metaphor. And it sounds as if the concept of being tangent is represented by meeting only once. (Indeed, a straight line in the plane is tangent to a circle if and only if they intersect once, though the situation is different for other curves. For example, the y-axis meets the curve y=x3-2x2+x exactly once but isn't tangent while the x-axis meets it more than once and is tangent!)
I don't know why the title is in English or whether there really is a "love formula" that appears in any of the stories. If you have read it and can help clarify the extent to which it is (or is not) mathematical fiction, I would be very grateful.
Update: I have received a second e-mail message from the Italian teenager who first wrote to let me know about this graphic novel, and it answers some of my questions:
| Contributed by
Giulia Maceroni
To answer the questions:
1) I hope to remember correctly, but one of the characters should be a mathematician, and the three stories are inspired by lines: parallels, tangents and asymptotes, respectively.
2) The story is completely in Italian, and no translation is available at the moment, I think. The title is in English for no apparent reason, if not to appeal to the Italian public by giving the idea it’s from America (comic books are a trend here!)
Hope this helps!
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It does...thanks to Giulia Maceroni for this additional information and for bringing this work of mathematical fiction to my attention. |
