Marcelo in the Real World

Synopsis

Marcelo in the Real World is a Young Adult novel published March 1, 2009 by [Scholastic Inc.] and written by Franciso X. Storm, and was a mentionable honor for the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award. It is a novel set in the modern times focusing on the imminent growing up and maturing of a teen. Written in first person, present-tense, the character, Marcelo Sandoval's thoughts are projected right to the reader.

Plot

In the novel, Marcelo in the Real World, the protagonist, Marcelo Sandoval, is a seventeen-year-old who hears music in his head as a result of mild autism, best described as a “cognitive disorder” by his father (Stork 54). He attends a protected school for special ed kids. His father, Arturo, a lawyer, confronts him about Marcelo needing experience in the “real world” and Marcelo is forced to choose to work at his father’s law firm over working at Paterson, his school, for a summer job, because he doesn’t want to attend the local public school, Oak Ridge High. At the law firm, Marcelo meets his coworker, Jasmine, who Arturo warns to Marcelo that “she eats little boys for breakfast” (Stork 47). She works with him inside of the mailroom where all packages are the be delivered, as well as things copied, bound, and all of that. He also meets two secretaries, Juliet and Martha, the latter being a woman who would “literally bounce on your bones if she could,” according to Jasmine (Stork 54), Mr. Holmes, who runs the law firm with Arturo, and his son, Wendell, who is “about three years older” than Marcelo. Wendell, who is described as a man with “the emotional maturity of a eight-year-old” according to Jasmine (Stork 61), attempts to befriend Marcelo and, although Marcelo thinks he wouldn’t be that bad to have him as one. Wendell explains to Marcelo about how sex is, how attraction feels and works, and then different types of women. The man’s sights are set on Jasmine, and he makes that clear to Marcelo on one of their lunches Wendell coaxes him into. Wendell’s plan is to go on a yacht trip with Marcelo and Jasmine, and while Marcelo “entertain[s] [himself] for a while up on deck,” Wendell will “take Jasmine below” (Stork 125). Although Marcelo says he will consider it, he does not want to do it and doesn’t want to upset the man, and Wendell declared they have a bond. “The bond between our fathers extends to you and me. Keeping that bond, that balance of power, is extremely important,” Wendell tells Marcelo. And then they have a bond, because Marcelo explain to him that he wants to go to Paterson for his last high school year, and he can only go there if he succeeds at the law firm.
Abiding by that bond, Wendell manages to get Marcelo promoted to working for him, organizing files for the Vidromek case. On the first day he is just helping him, Marcelo finds a picture of a girl and he doesn’t want anyone to “take away from [him] what the girl made [him] feel” (Stork 154). So he requests help from Jasmine to locate where the picture was taken, and she is able to find the name of the man: Géronimo “Jerry” Garcia. Jerry provides Marcelo with the girl’s name, Ixtel, and how he can help her by finding evidence against the Vidromek windshields. He asks for Jasmine’s, described as a fairly dependable character by now, help with this, and she manages to find a memo in Spanish they could use against the case. Though, before Marcelo can make any decisions on this, Jasmine takes him on a weekend trip with her to her fictional home in Vermont. There Marcelo is introduced to Jasmine’s dementia-suffering father, Amos, her childhood best friend, Jonah, his brother, Cody, and their father, Samuel. The next morning, Jasmine and Marcelo leave to go on a short camping trip where they lie under the stars and talk, and Marcelo has “butterflies in the stomach,” but, according to him, “they are not unpleasant, th[o]se butterflies” (Stork 257). Although Marcelo cannot think of a complete decision, Jasmine does tell him that he is always welcome to Vermont, and all he has to think about is the peace it brought him because out in the real world, it is implied that it is rare to get it.
When Marcelo returns to the law firm, during lunch, Wendell approaches him and, in his anger that Marcelo had gone to Vermont with Jasmine alone and still did not convince her of the yacht trip, gave him a note that Jasmine had written to Arturo a few years ago. In it, it is implied that something happened inside of Arturo’s office at a Christmas party while Jasmine was drunk, but it was “wrong” and “should never have happened” (Stork 265). Marcelo, although not entirely sure why, feels betrayed by Jasmine and Arturo, and attempts to avoid them both for a while. His mother, Aurora, after noticing that Marcelo’s visits to Rabbi Heschel have become spaced out so much, insists on taking him to her. He talks with her about revenge and making right and wrong choices, even with the right intent. She gives him advice on the subject, mentioning that people can make the wrong and right decisions for the right and wrong reasons. Marcelo, seeing that he wants to make the right choice for the right reason, decides he will hand the memo over for Ixtel, and not for revenge on his father. Jerry Garcia, needing only to see the memo, and know it exists, shakes up the law firm, and they pay him seventy-five thousand dollars for him to stay quiet. Wendell, though, finds out how the memo even got into Garcia’s hands and calls him out for it, though Marcelo is generally unfazed, only smiling as Wendell finally treats him like a normal person. Called into his father’s office, Marcelo is fired by him, and before he leaves, gives Arturo the letter. A day later, Jerry Garcia takes Marcelo to the Sisters where he meets Ixtel. He finds out that she will be able to have surgery, and he leaves feeling better, having gotten a kiss on the forehead by her.
When he gets back to the law firm the next day, he gets a letter from Arturo that apologizes and explains the contents of Jasmine’s letter. Not long after, Jasmines enters his office and, finding out that Marcelo knows about what can only be implied as sexual intercourse that happened between his father and her. But she explains that it was only a kiss, and she was eighteen, new, and had a crush on Mr. Sandoval. Marcelo, accepting of this fact, lets Jasmine know that he’d done research, and what he planned on doing after attending Oak Ridge High, which he had no choice but to since he failed at the real world. He plans on going to live in Vermont after he graduates, get a degree at a nearby college in nursing, and raise ponies on the Vermont farm to help with therapy for kids with special needs. Jasmine kisses him on the cheek and, after the internal music had ceased ever since he started working at the law firm, it returns in most beautiful of melodies” (Stork 312).

References

Voices of Autism Cooper J.H. Publisher's Weekly Levine Different Drummer Unforgettable Saint in the City

Grandstaff http://content.ebscohost.com/pdf27_28/pdf/2010/DABZ/01Dec10/66857999.pdf?T=P&P=AN&K=66857999&S=R&D=f6h&EbscoContent=dGJyMNLe80Sep7M4y9fwOLCmr0qep7BSr6e4TLCWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGusk2zrrRJuePfgeyx44Dt6fIA

External links

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