The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

Sorry to go against the grain but I did not like this book all that much. I found the format to be more annoying than astounding and felt like sometimes the marginalia was there to bolster the story because the author could not find a way to make it work in the actual narrative.

Granted, obviously multitudes of people have loved this book and I think Mr. Larsen does have talent as can be evidenced in his conversations with “Valero” and other portions in the latter part of the book. But overall I can say I read it but I can't say I'm happy about it.

I started out loving this book. It's a cool mix of a great story (young prodigy is selected to win an award by the Smithsonian) with side panels containing fascinating extensions of the plot illustrated to match the skills of the prodigy. Very clever. Unique for a fiction book, perhaps.

But the book became work. It was hard to focus on the story with all those clever side panels leading you off in a hundred different directions.

Very mixed feelings about this book. Brilliant but difficult.

An interesting concept for a novel (adolescent boy obsessed with mapping out every aspect of his life) with wonderful illustrations, but the problem with a novel that seems to want to be like a David Foster Wallace novel is that there was only one DFW.