Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
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?
Reif Larsen is the author of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet which was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and has now been made into a film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director of Amélie.
He studied at Brown University and has taught at Columbia University. His essays and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Tin House, The Millions and The Believer. He lives in Scotland.