The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
Published by Harvill Secker and published 7th May 2009 in Hardback
T.S. Spivet is a 12-year-old genius mapmaker who lives on a ranch in Montana. His father is a tight-lipped cowboy and his mother is a scientist who for the last twenty years has been looking for a mythical species of beetle. His brother has gone, his sister seems normal but might not be, and his dog – Verywell – is going mad. It’s odd, but then families are. T.S. makes sense of it all by drawing beautiful, meticulous maps kept in innumerable colour-coded notebooks: maps of the countryside, maps of his family’s behaviour, maps of animal and plant life. He is brilliant, and the Smithsonian Institution agrees, though when they telephone with news that he has won a major scientific prize they don’t suspect for a minute that he is twelve years old. So begins T.S.’s life-changing adventure, fleeing in the dead of night, riding freight trains two thousand miles across America to reach the awards dinner, the fame, the secret-society membership and the TV appearances that beckon. But is this what he wants? Do maps and lists explain the world? And why are adults so strange? “The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet” is a story like no other: exhilarating, funny, endlessly charming and unbearably poignant. It is a journey through life’s mysteries great and small, and about how on earth a boy with a telescope, four compasses and a theodolite should set about solving them.
I’ve been meaning to blog about this for the last week or so but it’s only now that I’ve managed to persuade the house’s resident photographer to take some gorgeous pics of the promotional extract I had in the form of a map.
It’s actually a good bit of timing as Simon A has just posted a review of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet over on BookGeeks.co.uk:
T.S.’s brains never alienate us from him, because they are counterbalanced by his baffled love for his home and family, and by the way he uses his skills to analyse and present some of the ludicrousness of modern life…
Simon also points out that it’s not really comparable to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime but I enjoyed that and it seems to fit in the ‘interesting story child point of view’ box so I’m curious to read it, especially after enjoying Curious Incident. Oh and I’ve got a bit of a book-thing going on and this one is reported to be gorgeous.
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