“The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet” by Reif Larson is quite literally a story in a story in a story. Perhaps this is a reason why the book is both celebrated and scrutinized.
The story begins in Divide, Mo., — a small town that “you could miss from the highway if you happened to adjust your radio at the wrong moment.” But the location might be the most appropriate of places for narrator Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet. Who, though a 12-year-old genius, is too often ignored by his family.
The book, which includes drawings throughout, allows readers to visually understand what T.S. is explaining. His bedroom looks like an adult’s, with no toys or candy anywhere. Just his Lewis and Clark carpet in the middle of his bedroom, cartography instruments and notebooks displayed throughout.
T.S. maps anything from the dead sparrow he was nicknamed after to the way his room is set up with personal cartography notebooks situated by color and direction. The blue notebooks on the south wall “were reserved for Maps of People Doing Things.” The green notebooks on the east wall “contained zoological, geological, and topographical maps.” And the red notebooks of the west wall were ones in which T.S. “mapped out insect anatomy” with hope that his mother, Clair Spivet, an entomologist, would take notice.
When the larger story begins with T.S. receiving a call from the Smithsonian that his cartography drawings of beetles have won him the Baird Award, he sets out to Washington, D.C., without informing his family. Dressed as what T.S. calls a hobo, he disguises and hides himself on a freight train. In the interim, T.S. profiles not only his immediate family but also those in history.
What readers eventually understand is that T.S. embedded himself into the work of cartography after his younger brother Layton’s death. Layton accidentally shot himself in the head with a Winchester rifle — “the only rifle with a barrel short enough to point at his face.”
Through the subtle hints in the drawings, readers can identify that the death has indeed caused a great divide among those in the Spivet household.
While this is a coming-of-age novel, Reif does a wonderful job in addressing the issues at the end. Though there are digressions and the conclusion almost seems too hopeful for some critics, it is nonetheless complete. All things considered, the mapping throughout the book serves as a way for T.S. to have control over life when everything seems despondent.
When his cowboy father Mr. Spivet arrives in Washington to find his son, he proves to him that T.S. matters, suggesting that though he or his mother might not show their affection, they are “devoted to (him) somethin’ powerful.”
T.S. returns home with his father. Though he is somewhat hesitant about what the rest of his family members might say about his departure, he continues through, pushing the door open and walking “into the light.”
Rating: W W W W 1/2
