The Selected Works of T S Spivet by Reif Larsen

The Selected Works of T S Spivet

Reif Larsen

TS Spivet is a genius map-maker but he’s also a 12 year old boy; he orders the world by reducing everything to maps and diagrams. When he wins a major scientific prize he embarks on a 2,000 mile journey to Washington, riding freight trains and hitching lifts. An utterly captivating read; you will find yourself rooting for this precocious boy as he tries to make sense of the adult world whilst astonishing the scientists.

Extract
There was a world inside that tall grass. You could plop yourself down in the middle of it with the scraggly stems against the back of your neck and the endless grasses rising up and jacknifing against the bigbluesky, and the ranch and all of its players would fade into a distant dream. On your back like this you could be anywhere. It was like a poor man's teleporter. I would close my eyes and listen to the soft swish of the leaf blades and pretend that I was in Grand Central Terminal, listening to the whisper of men's overcoats brushing past one another as they hurried to catch the express back to Connecticut.
Parallels
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
  • Little Miss Sunshine - the film