I specifically liked that it was a novel narrated thru pictures and snippets and cutesy letters passed between two individuals. No sugarcoating or anything, just the pure truth. Maybe the book wanted to leave it at that, and I wouldn’t want to sound pretentious, nope I am not being pretentious here, I just simply loved the whole of it. I tried to get back to the last few pages and I was baffled even more. In this stunningly moving novel told in photographs, pictures, and words, it’s up to the reader to decide what is real, what is imagined, and what has been madness all along….ĭid I miss out on anything? It feels like there was something I missed out on. Before long, Glory is unable to play anything but the song “Chopsticks.”īut nothing is what it seems, and Glory’s reality is not reality at all.

The farther she falls, the deeper she spirals into madness. Brilliant and lonely, Glory is drawn to an artistic new boy, Frank, who moves in next door. As we flash back to the events leading up to her disappearance, we see a girl on the precipice of disaster. Now, as a teenager, Glory has disappeared. Her single father raised her as a piano prodigy, with a rigid schedule and the goal of playing sold-out shows across the globe. Readers of the e-version can link through and watch them.Synopsis: After her mother died, Glory retreated into herself and her music. Links to videos Frank shoots are likewise referenced in the print version of Chopsticks through video stills and YouTube addresses embedded in snippets of instant messaging that the two send each other. In the app version, they're often animated. Many of Frank's drawings are included in the book's text. But presenting them through photographs lends authenticity and emotionality to this story of a girl's descent into madness, which morphs into a romance when a boy named Frank Mendoza moves in next door.

They're actors, as the credits at the back of the book make clear.

Glory and her family aren't real, of course. Readers enter Glory's house, then flip through the family photo album. To explain Glory's disappearance, the book then flashes back 18 months. At the time of her disappearance, however, she was living in a mental institution obsessively hammering out Chopsticks. Glory is a world-famous piano prodigy from the Bronx who, we learn from newspaper clippings, was once loved for her fusion of classical music with songs from modern bands such as Pavement and Wilco. It opens with a two-page photo of tree branches, followed by another spread of a fence casting prison-bar shadows, then a collage of TV screen grabs as newscasters report the disappearance of 17-year-old Glory Fleming. Chopsticks is an artful love story cloaked in mystery.

Chopsticks by jessica anthony