Plot Summary
Marcelo Sandoval is a seventeen year old boy on the high functioning end of the autism spectrum. His father, a high-powered lawyer, wants Marcelo to leave his special school and enter the "real world" where he will learn to socialize with "regular" people. Marcelo is initially crushed because he wants to work at his school over the summer and tend to ponies there. However, Marcelo is unable to refuse his father, and so he goes to work in the mail-room of the law office. Through his work there, Marcelo finds an object he is not supposed to see, a picture of a girl with half of a face. His brushes with the real world force him to encounter the confusion of interactions with “regular” people, injustice and the bittersweetness of romance. There is loss but also growth for Marcelo as he ventures out from the protections of his previous life and into the wild and unpredictable terrain of mainstream society.
Critical Evaluation
Marcelo is not “normal” in the sense that he finds casual conversations painful--he feels easily confused by all of the subtext of human interactions and does not quickly pick up on social cues. He feels more comfortable with scripted interactions and finds great solace in the music that he hears inside his mind and his devotional life. Inspired by his devout Mexican grandmother, Marcelo has developed an engaged life of prayer that does not necessarily fit well with the rest of society: he must be trained not to quote scripture to people he does not know well. This contributes to some very funny, but also moving moments in the novel. While Marcelo has unusual instincts, he also has a sweetness about him which leads to great confusion on his part when he encounters evil in the world. What is transcendent about Marcelo’s encounter with injustice is that he, with so few coping skills and experiences with the messiness of humanity, does brave it and comes through with his basic goodness intact.
Reader’s Annotation
Seventeen year old Marcelo is autistic and finds it challenging to relate to many people. His father forces him to enter the “real world” and face his greatest fears, and, in one summer, Marcelo learns far more than he could have ever imagined.
Information about the Author
On Teenreads.com, we learn about author Francisco X. Stork, “Francisco X. Stork was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and moved to the United States when he was nine. He studied Latin American literature at Harvard before completing a law degree at Columbia University. Publishers Weekly praised his first novel, THE WAY OF THE JAGUAR, as a “splendidly intense debut.” His second book, BEHIND THE EYES, was selected as both a Commended title for the Americas Award and a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age.
Francisco works as an attorney for an affordable-housing agency in Massachusetts. He lives near Boston with his wife.”
Genre
Realistic Fiction
Curriculum Ties
Within a cross-disciplinary Health/ English unit, this would be a great book to include within Literature Circles that focused on the theme of disabilities and mental health. Other books that could be included would be Speak, Catcher in the Rye and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.
Booktalking Ideas
Take two perspectives on what Marcelo should be doing for the summer--include Marcelo and his father.
Reading Level/ Interest Age
14+
Challenge Issues
N/A
Why Included?
I wanted to include a few novels from other (non-mainstream) perspectives and thought that Marcelo sounded like a compelling narrator. Also, this book came highly recommended from a trusted source.
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