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Lynn: In recent years we have seen several books centering on a narrator with a condition in the Asperger’s syndrome spectrum. The device allows commentary from a detached perspective on social interaction, language and the customs we take for granted. The risk is in creating a voice that does not sound authentic, but books such as The London Eye Mystery and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night have walked that tightrope exceedingly well. The latest entry in the field, Marcelo in the Real World (Scholastic, March 2009), equals and perhaps surpasses these two fine books. Seventeen-year-old Marcelo, handsome and fiercely intelligent, is comfortable with his life. He attends a private school, has plans to work with the school’s ponies during the summer and spend his off-time in an elaborate treehouse in the backyard. Marcelo’s comfort zone is ruptured when his attorney father insists that Marcelo work in his law firm for the summer in order to experience the real world. Marcelo’s voice is detached, reporting what he sees and feels like a biologist describing an exotic species. In Marcelo, Stork has created an immensely appealing character whose watchful innocence propels the exploration of such issues as ethics, religion, office politics, love, sexuality and competition. Interestingly, this book, as the previous two mentioned, includes a mystery, in this case a Grishamesque legal drama that heightens tension. While the solution to the mystery provides the pacing, it is Marcelo’s emotional growth that is the heart of the story. Pushed from his treehouse nest, Marcelo soars in this exceptional book that may be wearing a medal sticker in January. Don’t miss this!

Cindy: The deeper I became involved in Marcelo’s world, the slower I read. This is one of those books that I didn’t want to end. It’s one of those books in which the characters become so real you continue to wonder what they are up to today. It’s one of those delightful books that makes you laugh and cry and think. I agree with Lynn’s prediction that this book may have sticker (or two) on it by next January. It’s one I’ll be eager to read again and will look for on audio, and I’ll be ruminating on some of the great questions and issues that Marcelo struggles with: “How do we go about living when there is so much suffering?” Advice from friend Jasmine on decisions: “I am not situated to lose what you might lose. Every time you decide, there is loss, no matter how you decide. It’s always a question of what you cannot afford to lose.” And finally, how Marcelo deciphers how to “be in the world but not of the world.” I agree heartily with Han Nolan’s blurb on the advance reader copy: “I wish only that there could be more Marcelos in the real world.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Characters with disabilities, Fiction, Gr. 9-12, Mystery, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.