With his first novel, The Selected Works of T.S.
Spivet, Reif Larsen redefines both the map and the novel. “A good
map is like a good story,” he told the Mercury in a phone
interview. “It gives you something to sink your teeth into; it reveals
the map maker.” Stories and maps have long served as forms of
historical documentation, but the utility of most modern maps can make
them seem impersonal. In Spivet, Larsen—who was fascinated
by National Geographic maps as a kid—has created a new
kind of novel in which stories and maps harmoniously combine to tell a
surprisingly personal tale.

The novel’s main character, T.S. Spivet, is a 12-year-old
scientist/cartographer who lives on a Montana ranch and draws exquisite
maps of everything from male balding patterns to water tables to insect
anatomy. The story follows T.S. on a secret, solo adventure to
Washington, DC, where he is to receive an award at the Smithsonian.
Unlikely, yes, but not entirely unbelievable, and that’s part of the
charm.

The experience of reading this book is uniquely satisfying. The
writing style, much like its hero, favors the old-fashioned and
nostalgic. Though T.S. enjoys current kid-friendly institutions like
The Oregon Trail game and McDonald’s, his story lingers in
history and the age-old contemplation of love and loneliness. Yet what
lends this novel such personality is its very contemporary format:
along the margins of each page are maps, diagrams, doodles, and side
notes connected by arrows to the main body of the story. It’s as if the
novel itself were one of T.S.’s scientific notebooks. In an age when
the Kindle and electronic reading devices are amassing popularity,
Spivet is a prime example of the intimacy that a paper book can
hold in its pages. Each visual has the feel of a small secret shared
between reader and narrator. To hold this oddly square-shaped novel and
read about T.S. reading and writing in a notebook maintains a certain
continuity. Larsen is aware of this interaction—of what he calls
the “the vibe and physical space of the book,” as expressed in the
book’s design. Untrained as an artist, Larsen nonetheless did all the
book’s artwork himself. At one point, he considered making footnotes of
T.S.’s charts and maps, rather than interspersing them among the text,
but found it didn’t feel right—he wanted to “maintain that
airiness” that comes from spontaneous “doodles and sketches [in] the
space around text.” The end result is a scattering of “satellites” to
the novel that give T.S. a depth of character he might not otherwise
exude in prose. One might even go so far as to call the whole novel a
map of T.S.’s personal history. Though it may be lost in the wake of
the innovative visuals, it’s this well-written, personal, family
history that compels the reader to minutely examine each chart and
diagram, and begs the question: Are you reading a map, a novel, or
both?

Despite the success of Spivet—publishers clamored for
the rights to the book and directors are interested in making the book
into a movie—Larsen doesn’t plan to feature many images in his
upcoming work. “I didn’t set out to write a book that was illustrated,”
he admits. “It just grew out of the story.” His next book partially
concerns an underground puppeteer, which seems ripe with possibilities.
Soon we may be asking: Is it a puppet, a boy, or both?