Kids Like Us

August 15, 2017
Sixteen-year-old Martin Dubois navigates family, friendships, and neurotypical attitudes in Reyl's teen romance. Spending the first half of the summer in France on location with his filmmaker mother and Stanford-bound sister is as thrilling as it is terrifying for Martin. The white, autistic teen's near fluency in French, his penchant for classic French cookery, and his complex affinity for Proust's In Search of Lost Time (or Search, as he calls it) ought to make the trip an exciting immersion. But they are not enough to drown out Martin's anxiety about attending a general education French high school (lycee), where his ways of interpreting and interacting with the physical and social worlds are sure to clash with others'. To his surprise, however, he makes friends with a few students rather quickly and finds referential roles for all of them in Search, including the potential for romance. But when it becomes clear that the other teens have only befriended him for his proximity to Hollywood stars, Martin begins to consider all the relationships in his life and what they mean to and for him. While Reyl hasn't broken the mold of autistic teen protagonists, Martin is a credit to the growing corpus, with multimodal idiosyncrasies that he builds on rather than buries and a validating first-person narrative and first romance. A charming teen debut. (Fiction. 13-17)

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October 1, 2017

Gr 7-10-For the first time in his life, Martin Dubois, a 16-year-old with autism, has an opportunity to interact with and befriend neurotypical peers. He's attending a general education school in rural France while his film- director mother shoots a movie there, and the experience for him is confusing and frustrating, but also exhilarating. It is there that he first meets Simon, his school guide, and Alice, a girl who reminds him of Gilberte from In Search of Lost Time, a classic French novel he always keeps close by. Martin's eager and endearing attempts to fit in teach him new things about relationships, including the uncomfortable revelation that other people aren't always genuine. Reyl presents Martin as having high-functioning autism with mentions of echolalia, lack of eye contact, literal thinking, and rocking and moaning as a stress response. Martin is also physically attractive, which some characters explain is why others treat him in certain ways, such as mistaking him for neurotypical. Reyl tries to present Martin's atypical mannerisms authentically through first-person narration, which results in the text consisting of short, straightforward sentences. The lens of his social and emotional intelligence also results in secondary characters that lack depth, despite the author's attempts to hint at further development beyond Martin's perspective. In addition, Martin makes mistakes with using the wrong pronouns when stressed, which is not explained to readers until much later. These confusing details, as well as the somewhat improbable and unrelatable setting, may present barriers to some. VERDICT This overall sweet but challening story is an additional purchase.-Alea Perez, Westmont Public Library, IL

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Starred review from October 2, 2017
The original narrative voice of 16-year-old Martin drives adult author Reyl’s insightful and multilayered first book for teens, which brims with nostalgia, romance, complex supporting characters, and fascinating introspection. While on location in France at his mother’s latest film project, Martin, a handsome American student with autism who “could almost pass for nothing more than quirky,” experiences life through his “affinity” with Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (Martin simply calls it Search), which “has filled me up like an empty glass for years.” As Martin experiments with attending a general education summer school, he struggles to distinguish between events in Search and in his own life, as well as between “moths”—people drawn to him because of his mother’s celebrity—and real friends. Martin’s childhood memories, such as his parents’ early distress at his diagnosis (“We thought he was so cute, and he’s actually Rain Man”), blend seamlessly into the narrative, while Martin’s reflections on “the neurodiversity movement,” and efforts to “cure” autism raise thought-provoking ethical questions. Ages 12–up. Agent: Stéphanie Abou, Massie & McQuilkin.

Starred review from September 15, 2017
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Martin, 16, has high-functioning autism, and he is leaving the comfort zone of his small school in Los Angeles to accompany his mother and older sister to France for the summer. There he will attend a local high school's summer program, while his mother directs a movie. Martin brings with him his well-read copy of Swann's Way, the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, which informs just about every aspect of his life. When he develops a crush on a girl in his class, in his view, she becomes interchanged with a character from Proust's novel, and he hesitates to approach her lest the illusion be shattered. Meanwhile, his best friend from home warns him about people trying to befriend him to get closer to his famous mother, but Martin gradually learns how to manage those relationships in a way that plays to his strengths, and by the end of summer, Martin has grown in confidence and perceptiveness. Reyl movingly captures the point of view of a person who sees the world in a completely different way. Her writing is lucid and luminous, and the first-person narrative has a cinematic quality as Martin processes the world around him. Charming, thoughtful Martin is easy to root for, and readers will cheer as he triumphs over obstacles.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)