Chopsticks

This whimsical coming-of-age novel was so beautiful. The story is told through photographs, youtube videos, snippets of text messages, newspaper clippings and other odds and ends. The harder you look, the more you glean from its pages. It could stand alone as a coffee table book. You could almost flip through the pretty pages absentmindedly and not take in the story, almost.

There is a story there though. Frank and Glory fall in love. From his drawings and almost brutish persistence, I have trouble knowing if he is in love or just lonely and in seventeen-year-old-boy lust. At times Glory is vacant and distant. Their love seems to ebb and flow, like love does.

I enjoyed listening to the various songs on the mix cds that the lovers made for each other while I was enjoying the novel. That really added an extra layer to multimedia experience that this book was trying to produce. It really gave you a very tactile experience. There were some links that did not work, which was disappointing, but I forgave it.  

I had difficulty pinpointing a theme that I was pleased with. Perhaps this is due to lack of narrator. Whatever the reason, I settled on the bohemian “art, freedom and love conquer all.” How it all ended was difficult to infer, but I like to think that Glory got a job on a cruise ship playing things that made her happy, jumped port in Argentina and Frank followed her there. They lived happily ever after drinking red wine and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the windows open and a slight breeze. They freely made art, love and music the rest of their days.