Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral

Glory's mother died when she was 8.  Since then it's just been her, her father, and her piano.  At 17, Glory is now a piano prodigy, known as "The Brecht of the Piano" who travels all over the world to perform.  Then she meets Francisco, and everything changes.

While I liked the format of this graphic novel a lot, I didn't actually enjoy the story.  The entire story is told through photographs. Photographs of pieces of music, or the TV they watch, of notebooks, or notes, of photo albums.  Totally done in photographs.  There are very few words at all.  A few emails.  Some brief IM conversations, sometimes there's some text written over the photos, but for most part it's wordless and it's really cool.

However, the story did not do it for me.  And I was actually confused about the end.  Glory spends hours every day practicing piano with her father as her teacher.  She seems to do little else.  After she meets Francisco things are different.  She wants to spend time with him, and do things other teenagers do.  Glory's father does not like Francisco, because what father likes his teenage daughter's boyfriend and also because he distracts her.

Glory and Francisco two have a joke together - chopsticks.  F (for Francisco) and G (for Glory) moving closer together and father apart.  Then Glory's father takes her away to tour and go to school in Europe.  Glory and Francisco are of course sad to part.  Francisco constantly IMs her asking her if she missed him (she does) and sending her links to YouTube videos of chopsticks.  Glory seems to be losing touch with reality a bit.  She can't always perform.  During concerts she'll suddenly stop and start playing chopsticks.

Glory and her father return home, and she's with Francisco again, but she doesn't get better.  In fact she gets worse.  She can't stop playing chopsticks.  Her father puts her in a rest facility.  And then...she disappears.  I think she ran away and went to Argentina like she and Francisco talked about (Francisco is from Argentina)?  But it seemed weird that she'd go first. 

I didn't really like Francisco.  He seemed to just be constantly torturing Glory with the fact she wasn't there.  Yeah, I know you miss her, but you are not helping the situation!  And the constant sending of chopsticks while she's going crazy?  Not helping.

I felt really bad for Glory's dad.  Perhaps he shouldn't have pushed his kid so hard, but he's lost his wife and now Glory vanishes without a trace.  And how is Glory going to be in Argentina?  I mean, she was kind of crazy.  Are we supposed to think she's going to be OK now that there isn't any pressure?  Was she faking it the whole time?

I just don't know, but it wasn't satisfying.

Cool to look at though.