Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Review: Marcelo in the Real World

Marcelo in the Real World
By Francisco X. Stork
Published 2009 by Arthur A. Levine Books
Audiobook read by Lincoln Hoppe

This book came highly recommended to me by a number of people, as well as being well-reviewed in a number of sources. This book is fantastically interesting - Marcelo, a teenage with Autism Spectrum Disorder, wants nothing more than to spend his summer taking care of the ponies at the school he's attended his whole life. But his father has other plans. Refusing to believe that Marcelo can't function in the real world if he wanted to, he has lined up a different summer job for Marcelo - working in his law office. Everything about this book is perfectly done. Marcelo is a wonderfully complex character and the secondary characters that surround him are equally well-executed and interesting. The plot is perfectly paced and keeps you wondering what will happen next. The story was a really wonderful look into Marcelo's world.

My only problems with this were due to the format. Because of Marcelo's condition, he often speaks in the third person and doesn't use personal pronouns. This made it very difficult to distinguish dialogue from description while listening to the audiobook. Other than that, though, this was a wonderful read that I think would appeal to many different readers because there is a little bit of something for everyone.

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