Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

Marcelo in the Real World
Francisco X. Stork
ISBN 978-0-545-05474-4
312 pages
Arthur A. Levine, 2009

Genre: Coming of Age

Readers' Annotation:
Marcelo, who has Asperger's syndrome (an autism spectrum disorder), confronts the complexity of human relationships while working for his father's law firm the summer before his senior year of high school.

Plot Summary
Marcelo, an articulate 17-year-old, has a condition he describes as similar to Asperger's syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. People with Asperger's are generally intelligent and high-functioning and highly logical and have a hard time understanding the many nuances involved in a typical human relationship. Marcelo has spent his whole life as a student at Paterson, a school for special needs children, where he is comfortable and enjoys taking care of the horses they stable there for use in therapy.  His mother is supportive, but his father believes Marcelo is ready to become more independent and needs to move out of his comfort zone; he wants him to attend the local public high school for his senior year. His father makes a deal with Marcelo; if he can survive the summer working in the real world, at the law firm where his father is a successful partner, Marcelo can choose to spend his senior year at the school of his choice.

Marcelo takes his job as a mailroom clerk seriously and works hard to fit in. He is befriended by Jasmine, his boss, as well as Wendell, the son of his father's partner. Though Marcelo has previously viewed the world mostly in terms of black and white, the summer provides him with a number of situations that are more gray. He must wade through some complicated moral issues and figure out what he thinks about them, and also learns that not everyone is trustworthy, perhaps not even his own father.

Critical Evaluation:
This was a wonderfully original book, unlike anything I'd ever read before. Some reviewers and critics compared it to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, which also features an autistic first-person narrator, but I actually thought this was much better. Marcelo is a little more accessible than the narrator of Dog, who really cannot understand the emotional significance of the events that occur. Marcelo, on the other hand, slowly picks up on some nuances in the interoffice relationships that have been clear to the reader all along. The reader decides that perhaps Marcelo's father does have a point; though Marcelo may find more intimate human interactions uncomfortable, he is certainly capable of them.

There are some really interesting comments on race and class in the novel, too.  Marcelo and his family are Hispanic; though his father grew up poor, he graduated from Harvard Law School and is now a successful attorney. Jasmine, who works in the mail room with Marcelo, is a working-class Hispanic young woman, and Marcelo's father's partner and his college-aged son Wendell are well-connected wealthy WASPs. These characters all interact in ways that are affected by their race, education level, and socioeconomic class, though these subtleties are hard for Marcelo to grasp at first.

It's a beautifully written and thought-provoking book; Marcelo must make some pretty tough choices, choices that would be tough for anyone. It's wonderful to see how Marcelo grows and changes in the novel. The ending, where he truly has a vision for his future and his place in the world, is quite moving.

About the author:
Francisco X. Stork, an attorney, has written two previous young adult novels. Behind the Eyes, his second novel, was included on a list of New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age in 2007. His books feature Hispanic males as their protagonists.

Curriculum Ties:
This would be a great book for English teachers to use as an example of an unreliable narrator. Marcelo isn't unreliable, per se--he's truthful to a fault--but the reader may have a different take on early events in the book than Marcelo does.  It could also be used to discuss autism.

Booktalking Ideas:
1. Try to do a booktalk in character as Marcelo, using his very definite and precise voice.
2. Talk about Asperger's/autism and explain how it may affect Marcelo's view of the world.
3. Explore the relationship between Marcelo and Jasmine.
4. Explore the relationship between Marcelo and his parents and their different views of his future.

Reading/Interest Levels: 9th grade and up

Challenge Issues: There's a fair bit of swearing in the book, as well as some frank sexual discussion.

Selection Criteria:
I was intrigued by a review of the book for the Association of Children's Librarians of Northern California, where it was rated outstanding.  Other reviews I read agreed.