Sunday Salon – Happiness is a Really, Really Good Book: Review of “Marcelo in the Real World” by Francisco X. Stork

Before I tell you about this book, I want to insert a quote from the author’s blog on what it means to love a book, because I truly loved this book. And this post not only tells you what that means, but shows you something of the author’s style, and of his heart:

True Love

Authored by Francisco Stork

“I thought I would get philosophical (for a change!) and ask what it means to love a book. I often hear the phrase: “I liked it but I didn’t love it”, applied to a book. It surprises me to hear the word love so selectively applied to a book when it is so easily bandied about otherwise: “I love these potato chips.” It seems that we have more reverence for the word “love” when we refer to a book. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just my own inner desire to save the preciousness of the word by using it only when I believe it to be true love. It seems to me that love for a book entails both the rapture of first love and the commitment of forever love. If that is the case, no wonder I find it hard to love just any book. By “rapture of first love” I mean that recognition of the book’s beauty, its goodness, its literary qualities all of which are experienced in a kind of rapture, a losing of myself in the world of the book. (Sounds very much like falling in love for a person, doesn’t it?). By “Commitment of forever love” I mean that I choose, that I select and prefer this book to the many other books I have read. It means that the book is now a part of me and I a part of it. It means that I don’t want to leave it, that even as I finish reading it, I already want to return it. It means that along with the passion of the initial rapture there is also a peace that is intuitively recognized as lasting. This is true love for me. I only want to add that true love is subjective. There are “classics” that I don’t love and there are what many would consider poorly written books that I love with all my heart. With these last kind there is a recognition of souls that takes places that pierces through the surface. May our hearts be always full of love.”

My Review:

This book won, inter alia, New York Times Notable Children’s Book of 2009, 2009 Booklist Editors’ Choice, Horn Book Fanfare Book, Kirkus Best Book of 2009, Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009 and School Library Journal Best Book of 2009.

Much of the marketing for this book labels it as a book about Asperger’s Syndrome, a high-level functioning form of autism. I think that characterization mispresents the nature of this book. Yes, 17-year old Marcelo Sandoval has been diagnosed with AS, but the story is not about his disability, per se, other than perhaps in terms of the reaction of other people to Marcelo. Above all, it is a beautiful coming of age story about what happens when Marcelo leaves the protected environment of a special school and goes to work at his father’s law firm “in the real world.”

Marcelo’s father Arturo, the head of a rapacious corporate law firm, thinks “the real world” will be good for him. But for Marcelo, in an analogy later explored with his spiritual advisor, Rabbi Heschel, the transition is more than just a change of location. By going from the special school to the law firm, basically he has left the innocence and goodness of Eden and now has to learn about the existence of evil. He even begins to question his faith, which previously had been the bedrock of his sheltered existence. The pain he saw at the special school, he discovers, is nothing in comparison to the pain people inflict on one another outside its confines.

At the law firm, his father arranges for him to work in the mailroom under Jasmine, a girl not much older than he is. She is kind and patient with him, unlike others in the firm, who call him “Gump” or “Retard.” Marcelo and Jasmine discover they share a love of music and of the way it both calms and also elates them.

Wendell, the shallow and callow son of Arturo’s partner, gets Marcelo transferred to his office so that Marcelo can do his work while he hits the beach. He also regularly tries to pressure Marcelo into helping him get Jasmine into a compromising sexual situation.

But while doing Wendell’s work, Marcelo discovers something about a big ongoing litigation case that will ultimately change his life. First though, he must decide how to resolve the moral dilemma he has encountered. He asks Jasmine for her opinion:

“Jasmine: I’m not the one playing the piano here. You’re the one that needs to decide what the next note will be.

Marcelo: But how do I know the next note is the right one?

Jasmine: The right note sounds right and the wrong note sounds wrong.”

Rabbi Heschel uses her own analogy: When the sap comes up from the ground and travels through the branches of a tree, it can go up one branch and it is good and bears fruit. Or it can go up another but it is evil and there is no fruit. She says: “You have to make sure it goes up the right branch. It’s up to you.”

Beyond the micro sense of the wrongdoing he has uncovered, Marcelo wonders generally, “How do we go about living when there is so much suffering?“ The process by which Marcelo arrives at a satisfactory answer to both of these questions is one that is so well thought out and riveting that the reader is carried along by his logic and good-heartedness to perform a similar self-analysis.

And the beginnings of young love, so new to someone like Marcelo, are a joy to witness. He wonders why he feels like there are “a thousand butterflies fluttering inside of him” when he is near Jasmine. He also tries to work out what this means, and how it fits in with his other discoveries about the real world.

Evaluation: Did I say enough times how fabulous this book is? It’s not another wonderful book about a disabled person. It’s a wonderful book in which the protagonist (and narrator) happens to be disabled. And yet, by the end of the book, you wonder, along with some of the characters, who the “disabled” people in this story really are. Highly recommended!

Rating: 5/5

Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, 2009