My first lock-in

I was fortunate enough to be invited along to an after-hours tour of the Saatchi Gallery, courtesy of Jonathan Cape, set up to promote the series of books they publish to coincide with each major show. The current exhibition is New Chinese Art and even the more expert booksellers amongst the party found it quite eye-opening to have our tour conducted by the Gallery's Senior Curator, who took us from room to room, picking out one piece from each for a commentary.

The restrictions on political expression in China offer pitfalls for an artist with a remotely radical agenda, so I was surprised to learn about the subversive ideas symbolically secreted in so many artworks. Political mandarins, so steeped are they in dogma, tend not to be well versed in contemporary art, I was told, and so these subtle interpretations are beyond them.

This got me thinking about the language of artistic criticism in China. Words give up their meanings rather more easily, so I came to the conclusion that there must be some sort of artistic argot or metalanguage with which these ideas are discussed. Chinese languages, being pictogrammatically based, are full of loosely defined words which are given more precise meaning through their context. No wonder east and west sometimes struggle to reconcile their cultural differences; the basis of communication is structured in fundamentally different ways.

Fascinating though our little tour was, halfway round it occurred to me to wander off on my own for a bit. To stand alone, in silence, in the open space of such a gallery, contemplating exhibits without distraction, is a profound thing to do. When I returned to the fold, I mentioned this to our guide, who confessed that she rather likes being able to do just this herself.

Maybe it has something to do with being a booklover, in my case at least. Reading is a solitary activity and, while discussing books with others who have also read them is an important part of the experience, that initial time alone is essential in letting their ideas and images coalesce.

I suspect one of the reasons that I don't 'get' graphic novels, aside from my usual glib comment that it seems like a lot of effort for very few words, is that I want my mental image of the world in which I am immersing myself to form spontaneously, without prompts and clues.

One new book which confronts this dichotomy of the verbal and the visual is a debut novel due in May, The Selected Works of T S Spivet by Reif Larsen. It is illustrated throughout with the purported diagrams and designs of 12 year-old boy, whose maps mark him out as quite the prodigy. Though he lives on a working farm in Montana, his mother is an entomologist, from whom T S (Tecumseh Sparrow, for reasons which I suggest you read the book to discover) apparently inherits his instincts for meticulous cataloguing.

Recognition of a series of his works leads to his being awarded a prestigious title by the Smithsonian, who are unaware of his youth, but he accepts the accolade and elects to travel alone hobo-style on trains to receive his due.

Most of his maps represent scientific observations, but usually of the things which might preoccupy a boy of his age and it is this juvenile dalliance in an adult world which seems to have encouraged the book's publisher, Harvill Secker, to compare it to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Such comparisons always make me wary. Every time a catalogue suggests a book might be the next Kite Runner or Captain Corelli or Secret History, I, and I suspect many other booksellers, begin to suspect that the book in question lacks the imagination or quality to stand alone. Comparisons with other works can be useful, but far too often they are made with reference to books which have freakishly outsold all expectations. The circumstances of such a success are almost always too obscurely unique that to claim to be able to repeat them is always preposterous.

All of which is a protracted way of saying that comparing Larsen with Haddon is pointless; and in this case, its entirely erroneous. This is an adult novel in ways that Haddon's simply isn't, endearing though they both might be.

This bubbles with ideas, gives its characters complex depths beneath their raw emotions and makes the the minutiae of T S's adventure into as engrossingly a part of his grand journey. Harvill Secker know they have a special book on their hands and it will be interesting to see whether they can convey its originality in their marketing of it at the same time as making it a very commercial prospect.