The Young and Prodigious TS Spivet

A captivating, loveable novel of stunning originality and poignancy about a 12-year-old genius mapmaker. Now a major motion picture from the director of 'Amelie', starring Helena Bonham Carter.

Here is a book that does the impossible: it combines Mark Twain, Thomas Pynchon, and Little Miss Sunshine. Good novels entertain; great ones come as a gift to the readers who are lucky enough to find them. This book is a treasure

Larsen has made an impressive mark ... spectacularly funny

Reif Larsen's wonderful original debut, destined to please readers of all ages, is the Next Big Thing... echoes of Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover and Nicholson Baker... a lively sophisticated narrative that looks to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Impossible to put down. Engagingly poignant and charmingly quirky ... Larsen is an accomplished writer, but he's also a hugely gifted illustrator ... It's a genius debut.

Fantastical, funny and delightfully original

A wilfully original and diverting book ... you can see exactly why it caused publishers to sit up. It is charming and kooky

Think Tom Sawyer with a passion for empirical science... one of the most original books of the year

Reif Larsen's debut novel combines meticulous eccentricity with an amazingly broad appeal ... the book is a thing of beauty in itself... TS's voice - and scientific pencil - enchant the reader ... TS's journey - towards forgiveness, understanding, adulthood, love - is a familiar one, but the views are spectacular.

We believe in Spivet because Larsen gives us so much that is elegant and even pretty to look at. The book is beautifully produced with drawings and maps, yet the account of the train journey in this attractively naïve voice would be admirable even if it were not framed and accompanied by sketches

It has the makings of a cult classic...a deliciously ambitious book, a confident blast of ideas - and a beautiful object

Highly entertaining journey...Larsen will go on great things

a mind-bending journey into the strange world of Spivet [...] Magical

The real star of the show is Reif Larsen, a first time American novelist...Some of the sly coming-of-age humour is reminiscent of Huckleberry Finn, but it is also very much a modern novel

An endearing and original coming-of-age story

A wilfully original and diverting book, full of carefully penned ephemera.

The tale of map-obsessed outcast TS Spivet is captivating but it's the intricate illustrations - from the temperamental family toaster to the trajectory of his father's whiskey sips - that make this a rewardingly unique read.

Larsen's achievement is to have created a quirky, engaging, painfully vulnerable hero - not to mention a book that's truly lovely to look at, heavily illustrated throughout with examples of T.S.'s prize-winning maps and charts.

Larsen's debut is engaging... plenty of intelligent perceptions, and a generous smattering of Spivet's drawings

The Selected Works of TS Spivet is a joy; a colourful feast of a book... few [books are] as bold as refreshing as Reif Larsen's debut... The account of [Spivet's] adventure is engrossing and full of allusions to classic American literature... There's a lovely hand-crafted quality to the book, and even in paperback form it is a beautiful object

Independent on Sunday, Christmas round up

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.

Dear Spivet Family, 
I have gone for a while to do some work. Don't worry, I'll be fine. I didn't want to bother you by telling about it ahead of time. Thank you for taking care of me. You are one of the best families in the world. 
Love, T.S. 
 
T.S. makes sense of his chaotic family life 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?

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

A loveable, totally original story of one boy's epic journey

the real star of the show is Reif Larson, a first time American novelist...Some of the sly coming-of-age humour is reminiscent of Huckleberry Finn, but it is also very much a modern novel

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

I Am Radar is as easy to enjoy for its swaggering tragicomic spirit as it is to admire for its celestial ambition

Big, beautiful, ambitious… His prose is addictive and enchanting

Larsen has wit, intelligence, empathy and imagination. What he turns his clear gifts to next promises to be fascinating

Chameleonic, ambitious, epic, fantastical, whimsical, thought-provoking, arcane, philosophical, exhaustive, and completely bonkers — these are just some of the words that could be used to describe I Am Radar… Unquestionably one of the more adventurous entries into the literary landscape

One of our most highly anticipated novels of the year

I am Radar provides oldfangled delights. Larsen can describe humanity at its worst…but his lightness of touch and enjoyably complex characters keep you hoping for the best

Larsen has wit, intelligence, empathy and imagination

Balances exciting stories with celebrations about the powers of electricity and political art.

Gripping ... masterly ... Larsen is an effortless magician, and his performance here is a pure delight

A kaleidoscopic, epic novel about a lovestruck radio operator who discovers a secret society… 
 
In 1975, a black child is mysteriously born to white parents. 
 
His name is Radar Radmanovic. 
 
Radar grows up in suburban New Jersey, but his story rapidly becomes entangled with terrible events in Yugoslavia, Norway, Cambodia, the Congo, and beyond. Falling in with a secretive group of puppeteers and scientists who stage experimental performances in war zones around the world, he is soon forced to confront the true nature of his identity.

Reif Larsen

Praise for I Am Radar

Inventive and surreal

I Am Radar is as easy to enjoy for its swaggering tragicomic spirit as it is to admire for its celestial ambition

Big, beautiful, ambitious… His prose is addictive and enchanting

Inventive and surreal

I Am Radar is as easy to enjoy for its swaggering tragicomic spirit as it is to admire for its celestial ambition

Big, beautiful, ambitious… His prose is addictive and enchanting

Inventive and surreal

I Am Radar is as easy to enjoy for its swaggering tragicomic spirit as it is to admire for its celestial ambition

Big, beautiful, ambitious… His prose is addictive and enchanting

Books by Reif Larsen

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