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)

better than I expected

Where does Tinkers rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
I'm not sure where to rank it. Not at the top, but certainly not near the bottom. It's a different kind of novel.

Who was your favorite character and why?
I liked Howard the best. The sections with Howard driving the cart and his mule, Prince Albert, pulling it were the most interesting.

What does Christian Rummel bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Rummel does a great job of reading. I really have no complaints. The narration is on par with the story.

If you could take any character from Tinkers out to dinner, who would it be and why?
Prince Albert, the mule, because that would surely be something to see.

Any additional comments?
This novel is for those who like description and enjoy the beauty of language. Don't get me wrong, there's a story here, and the author does a good job of telling it. It's not a long recording, and it's worth the time.

Hated It!

Well written, listening to it was confusing. Most of my book club didn't like it either. Pulitzer or not...not my kind of book!

Ugh - simple plot beautifully written

Tried to finish the book, got bored, and decided to listen to it on Audible instead. Great book for those wanting a book with a remedial plot, but written well with very descriptive language. I would pass on this one - glad it's over.

Annoying narrator and confusing plot

This narrator was one of the most annoying narrators I've ever heard. I had a hard time listening to this audiobook because of his voice and his inflection. I found it difficult to follow this story, because it isn't really just a story, it has a lot of jumping over time and space and speakers and characters. I found the parts that were stronger were the ones that were actually showing story itself and not talking about clocks or bees or other philosophical musings.

Decent, but...

No structure. Enjoyable characters and a very emotional ending. I, however, am skeptical this novel would not have been better without some serious planning and perhaps another voice in the room. As it stands, it requires alot of patience, even for a novella-length story. Recommended, but not for everyone.

"Poetical language" is pretentious.

I found "Tinkers" difficult to pay attention to for long. I don't think I have gotten more than a third of the way through its four and a half hours in three or four attempts. The language is flowery and over-blown.

I was also somewhat annoyed by the narrator's voice and delivery. Not my kind of book.

I suspect that I should love this book.

I admire the author. Some of the phrases in this book are so beautiful I feel the words catch in my own throat, even though I am listening it being read. And it's an awful reader, at that. I am simply flummoxed by the choice of this particular reader for this gracefully worded and delicately unfolding end of life story. The reader's voice is loud, really loud, with scarce inflection most of the time, and he just hammers through some scenes that are so heartbreaking....couldn't he have paused to, maybe, take a breath, or something? If this style of recitation was deliberately matched to this story, then I am at a loss to understand or appreciate or like it. I tried, re-tried, and tried again to get through this book, but I was not able to finish it.

Where has this book been hiding?

A great story with an important message; unfortunately, the narrator had a very unpleasant manner--he reads in a choppy way that is unsettling on the ears.

Just... Couldn't... Finish... ugh...

I've been enjoying reading Pulitzer winning fiction for years. As I've begun to listen to more books I recently tried and loved A Visit From the Goon Squad (prior to its Pulitzer win) and gave five stars to Empire Falls which was a 20 hour book.
For a break I figured I'd give Tinkers a try as a shorter listen. What a disappointment. Unlike powerful (relatively) shorter books like Toni Morrison's Beloved, Tinkers grated on my nerves from the very beginning.
Professional reviews touted the detail of such tasks as watch repair which I found to be eloquent (for a watch repair manual) but incredibly boring in a novel. Proulx's The Shipping News contains a scene which describes the construction of a boat in detail as an integral part of the story after we're invested in the characters. In Tinkers however, the detailed clock repair scene made me want to drive into a tree. Any time the story even hinted at the prospect of another journey down the clock repair path I could only grit my teeth.
The trek in Tinkers felt contrived to me unlike Cold Mountain which was a sequence of adventures within a larger plot. I had no interest in the main characters nor the sub-characters who often felt forced into the story to me.
In the end I just couldn't finish the book and clicked it off with little reservation. As a concession for my bailing out I gave it a second star. Maybe it improved but I just couldn't give it that chance. Life is just too short.

Too much descriptive waffle for my taste.

Unfortinately I couldn't find a "hook" in this story to maintain my interest. Endured to the end but found no improvement.