Moving and emotionally resonant, this is a very different take on teenage romance, that disrupts the conventions of the novel to tell a story in a new way. The book is also accompanied by multimedia elements, including a website and an iPhone/iPad app, bringing together videos and songs that themselves become part of the story. Beautifully-presented, tender and thought-provoking, it raises more questions than it offers simple answers, finally leaving us uncertain about what is real and what is imagined. This unusual story of star-crossed teenage love is told visually, through a series of photographs, collages and scrapbook pages allowing the reader to piece together Glory's story from an accumulation of ephemera. Jessica Anthony is the author of The Convalescent (McSweeneys/Grove), a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and Chopsticks (Razorbill). The two are quickly drawn to each other, and begin to exchange mix CDs and chat on IM late at night: but Glory's father doesn't approve of their burgeoning relationship. Having moved from Argentina, Frank is an outsider at his all-boys school, excelling in the visual arts but with little interest in academic subjects. Following the death of her mother when she was a child, she took solace in her music, and now, with the encouragement of her father, she is playing sold-out shows at the Kennedy Centre and Carnegie Hall. It’s daring on all fronts and-depending upon one’s tolerance for ambiguity-successful on most of them.Seventeen-year-old Glory is a world famous piano prodigy. A huge aha! moment (that we wouldn’t dream of spoiling) turns the whole thing on its head and makes successive reads an entirely different story. But the simple, dissonant chords of “Chopsticks” start to intrude upon and then dominate her performances, hinting at both her longing for Francisco and a teetering mental stability. Glory’s overbearing father takes her on a European tour to showcase her celebrated talent of seamlessly blending classical compositions with modern rock, often on the fly.

Piano prodigy Glory Fleming meets an Argentinian teen, Francisco Mendoza, and the two fall into a mutual obsession. But this high-concept book’s ambition isn’t limited to its visual narrative mode and transmedia accessorizing, as the story itself moves from a teen love affair (and with condom wrappers, nude sketches, and more implied sexuality, it is definitely an affair) into something much deeper-and far trickier. With a narrative that unfolds in a procession of photographs, sketches, scrap paper, wine labels, mix-CD playlists, IM sessions, TV stills, letters sent home from school, and other bits of visual imagery overlaid by short bursts of text, this is a book that plays with the boundaries between novel, graphic novel, scrapbook story, and multiplatform blitz (paid apps, YouTube videos, and an interactive, electronic version of the book are also in the offing).

Chopsticks by jessica anthony