So glad I sat down and read this one. Didn’t even notice the time passing…Actually, I finished the last page after my 48 hours ran out, but this book was meant to be savored. All the same, I won’t (can’t) count the overtime.
There’s a lot of good things to say about Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork. For starters, Marcelo has gotten a lot of praise for its depiction of someone with a condition similar to but not quite like Asperger’s. He’s quirky in that he hears internal music, studies religious texts religiously, has difficulty recognizing sarcasm, and refers to himself in the third person, but he’s also a lot more than the sum of his quirks.
When we first meet Marcelo, he has his heart set on helping to train the Haflinger ponies used for therapy at his special private school over the summer. However, his father, a hotshot lawyer, bargains with him to work in the mail room of his high-powered law firm instead so he can learn the rules of the “real world” in exchange for the chance to choose where he will attend his senior year of high school, Paterson or public school.
But Marcelo’s story is more than a worst-summer-job-ever kind of tale, even though he does have to put up with office workers who see him as a circus freak, especially the Holmes, a nasty, entitled father-son duo who want to take advantage of Marcelo’s innocence. When Marcelo stumbles across a legal document that introduces a dilemma of ethics and family loyalties, it becomes a coming of age journey of self-awareness. Marcelo learns to see the whites, blacks, and grays of his passions, flaws, and motivations, both his and that of those around him. More importantly, he is able to consider their costs and still stand by his personal convictions. It’s a remarkable feat for someone his age and absolutely empowering to read, especially as I’m a good deal older than Marcelo is and still working on how to live out my life.
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