The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
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T.S. Spivet is a genius mapmaker who lives on a ranch in Montana. His father is a silent 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. T.S. makes sense of it all by drawing beautiful, meticulous maps kept in innumerable colour-coded notebooks.He is brilliant, and the Smithsonian Institution agrees, though when they award him a major scientific prize they don't suspect for a moment that he is twelve years old. So begins T.S.'s life-changing adventure, travelling two thousand miles across America to reach the awards dinner, the secret-society membership and the TV interviews that beckon. But is this what he wants? Do maps and lists explain the world? And why are adults so strange?
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Sorry to go against the grain but I did not like this book all that much. I found the format to be more annoying than astounding and felt like sometimes the marginalia was there to bolster the story because the author could not find a way to make it work in the actual narrative.
Granted, obviously multitudes of people have loved this book and I think Mr. Larsen does have talent as can be evidenced in his conversations with “Valero” and other portions in the latter part of the book. But overall I can say I read it but I can't say I'm happy about it.
I started out loving this book. It's a cool mix of a great story (young prodigy is selected to win an award by the Smithsonian) with side panels containing fascinating extensions of the plot illustrated to match the skills of the prodigy. Very clever. Unique for a fiction book, perhaps.
But the book became work. It was hard to focus on the story with all those clever side panels leading you off in a hundred different directions.
Very mixed feelings about this book. Brilliant but difficult.
