Tinkers

By: Paul Harding

Narrated by: Christian Rummel

Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2010

An old man lies dying. Confined to bed in his living room, he sees the walls around him begin to collapse, the windows come loose from their sashes, and the ceiling plaster fall off in great chunks, showering him with a lifetime of debris: newspaper clippings, old photographs, wool jackets, rusty tools, and the mangled brass works of antique clocks. Soon, the clouds from the sky above plummet down on top of him, followed by the stars, till the black night covers him like a shroud. He is hallucinating, in death throes from cancer and kidney failure.

A methodical repairer of clocks, he is now finally released from the usual constraints of time and memory to rejoin his father, an epileptic, itinerant peddler, whom he had lost seven decades before. In his return to the wonder and pain of his impoverished childhood in the backwoods of Maine, he recovers a natural world that is at once indifferent to man and inseparable from him, menacing and awe inspiring.

Tinkers is about the legacy of consciousness and the porousness of identity from one generation the next. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, it is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature.

©2009 Paul Harding (P)2008 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"An outstanding debut.... The real star is Harding's language, which dazzles whether he's describing the workings of clocks, sensory images of nature, the many engaging side characters who populate the book, or even a short passage on how to build a bird nest. This is an especially gorgeous example of novelistic craftsmanship." ( Publishers Weekly)

"This compact, adamantine debut dips in and out of the consciousness of a New England patriarch named George Washington Crosby as he lies dying on a hospital bed in his living room.... In Harding's skillful evocation, Crosby's life, seen from its final moments, becomes a mosaic of memories, 'showing him a different self every time he tried to make an assessment.'" ( The New Yorker)

No........don't do it!!

Sorry.......but this one is not even worth your effort. Not sure what I was thinking when I purchased it. Don't do it!!!

grief - an exploration

Tinkers is profound and moving, and for me was reminiscent of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Caldwell's Tobacco Road. This is a book that touched my heart and made me remember my dad and my grandfather. It is all about love, loss, death and healing. It is a small, beautiful book which is contemplative, subtle and nuanced. The writing is spare and simple, and the characters are very real. The first lines of the book had me hooked immediately.

As the book opens we find ourselves in the living room of an old man at the end of his life. He is surrounded by his family and the clocks he tinkered with for most of his life. That scene alone had me hooked. The man begins a journey through his life. The fact that his body is no longer functioning and headed towards death enhanced the free exploration of memory and allowed me to feel more connected to this frail man. My own father laid in a similar bed at the end of his life, mostly asleep and nonverbal. I wonder what journey he took through time? I hope it was enriching, curative and joyous, and that even some of the sad memories were redeeming.

The strength of this book is its use of the unreliability of memory. George Crosby was a watchmaker and handyman, he revisits his childhood in Maine and his father Howard, who left the family when George was still a child. Howard suffered from epilepsy at a time when most people didn't understand that it wasn't a mental illness. George's mother hid the affliction from the family until one night when he suffered a seizure at the dinner table. George was needed to help and ended up suffering a horrible bite where his hand was damaged. After this George's mom made the agonizing decision to have Howard placed in the asylum, but Howard knew the plan and disappeared instead. Howard's own father disappeared. He was suffering from some sort of mental break or dementia, and before his family could hospitalize him he left.

The book is focused and poignant. It takes place in the memories of a man who is living the last eight days of his life. And the meandering nature of his memories beautifully demonstrates the delicacy of life, love, connection, and death. We don't have control over these things. We can only wander and wonder and appreciate and remember.

The end came too quickly in this book. George passed and his family was left to grieve, just like my dad passed and left me to grieve. Thankfully I find him again when I find books like this gem by Paul Harding.

Death

That clock, what a long winding road meeting people place and not quite sure what to your death.

Great little book

Maybe not the best choice for narrator though. This is such a contemplative, poetic novel, and I associate the narrator with hard boiled crime. He is very clear though, so at least every word is understandable.

The book itself is a revelation, a jewel, a thing of beauty.

Beautiful story and writing!

A beautifully written book! I had all but given up on the Pulitzer Committee, thinking they opted for political statements over literary merit every time, but this was a great choice.

Beautiful

The language in this book is truly beautiful. I enjoyed the performance but this is a book that at times I wished I had the physical book in front of my so I could see the beauty of the words on the page.

Don't listen to this one

This is an incredible book by an incredible writer with haunting prose that can be savored. But it was impossible to listen to as an audio book. The writer shifts thoughts and time zones and it is hard to tell what is happening in the long chapters. I ended up buying it as a book and I loved it but the small cues of paragraph breaks and pauses are lost in audio.

poetic paternal passion

So many levels of meaning, woven through three generations. I loved the imagery and how it connected with the messages

Breath Taking

I had no preconceptions when I ordered Tinkers. My wife's book club selected it and in my ongoing effort to be a supportive husband I decided to "read" along. (If I had known the book's premise, I wouldn't have touched it with a ten foot pole. A book about a dieing man? Never.)

I was immediately taken by the poetry laced through out the narrative. The master of the well-turned phrase, John Updike, came to mind in light of the extordinary richness and color of the language in Tinkers.

Slowly I became increasingly interested in the odd assortment of characters. By the book's conclusion I was swept away by what is certainly the best work of fiction I have "read" in years.

Whether you have read Tinkers already or not, if you have not listened to it being read you have missed part of its enchantment. Close your eyes and let the stream of beautiful sentences flow over you.

In case you are wondering, I borrowed my wife's copy of Tinkers after her book club and read it through in one setting. Another wonderful, but less sensual experience.

A rich pattern

Beautiful language and rich characters. I really enjoyed this book mainly for the poetry of the words