Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral

Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral is described as a novel. But it’s a novel with few words and lots of pictures and it’s the pictures that tell the story leading up to the disappearance of child piano prodigy Gloria “Glory” Fleming from the Golden Hands Rest Facility for burned out (my words) child pianists whose parents push too hard. The pictures tell the story of Glory’s relationship with her new next door neighbor Francisco Mendoza.

If this was merely the story of Glory’s disappearance, there’d be no story. However, there’s more than meets the eye…actually, if you have a good eye and study the photos, you’ll uncover some things that make you wonder. And a book that makes you think and wonder is good.

Anthony and Corral’s novel approach (no pun intended) would probably be better in the interactive, multimedia electronic version which was supposed to be issued simultaneously with the print version, in that there are links to YouTube videos that obviously I couldn’t access as I read. I tried getting the videos by going directly to the URLs shown in the book without any luck.

So, in the words of Rod Stewart, Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It? And in this case, the combination of a novelist and an artist has come out with a unique creation worth exploring.