MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD

In what turns out to be considerably more than just another tale told by an intelligent narrator with a spectrum disorder, 17-year-old Marcelo Sandoval gets a life-changing taste of the “real world” when he’s forced to take a summer job in his father’s law firm. Comfortable with his limitations but still anxious, Marcelo strikes gold immediately when Jasmine, his supervisor in the Mail Room, turns out to be an uncommonly perceptive young woman—unlike Wendell, the sex-obsessed son of his father’s slimeball legal partner. Vicious office intrigues, Marcelo’s long-standing fascination with religious thought and his discovery of a damning piece of suppressed evidence in a case involving his father’s biggest corporate client all lead to a series of short but deep heart-to-heart conversations about ethics, God’s will and other big questions. In the end Marcelo keeps his feet amid strong emotional currents, makes the hard choices and even maps out a personal future that wasn’t at all clear earlier on. Making good on the promise of his Way of the Jaguar (2000), Stork delivers a powerful tale populated by appealing (and decidedly unappealing) characters and rich in emotional nuance. (Fiction. YA)