Tinkers

What a gorgeous book! Don't expect a gripping plot; this novel reads more like lyrical poetry than most fiction. But once you sink into the lush, slow language and the quirky psyches of the three generations of men Harding traces, you feel you've inhabited another era, one more given to lingering contemplation of the natural world. This book, while full of broken relationships, is also packed with tremendous joy and sustaining love--another rarity in contemporary fiction. Definitely worthy of the Pulitzer. ( )

A hauntingly beautiful book because of its moving descriptions of the emotional and physical environments of George Crosby's life and passing. The story is unusual because it flows from Crosby's reminiscents of his life while dying in a hospital bed in his living room. Crosby was an horologist, so there is a continual reference to clock mechanisms, repair and "tinkering". It is also the story of his father Howard, who was a real New England tinker( peddling pans, soap, clothes, etc. in the countryside from a homemade wagon), who had bitten George during an epileptic seizure and then abandoned his family to start a new life with a new name and new family in Philadelphia. ( )

Not a bad little story at all. And short. Short is good. ( )

Poem, maybe. Novel, no. ( )

A short book that packs a powerful emotional wallop.

You know that brilliant chapter in "Watchmen" where Dr. Manhattan experiences every instant of his life in an eternal present? Of course you don't. Unless you're a comic book nerd like me. Anyway, this book reminds me of that section of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' wonderful graphic novel.

Like Jon Osterman's father in "Watchmen", George Crosby in "Tinkers" fixes clocks. On his deathbed in 1995, George relives parts of his own life, but also experiences the life of his father, Howard. In a Jungian "ancestral memory" sense, George experiences Howard's life firsthand. Even parts of it he could not have known of. George even experiences Howard's childhood memories of his own father. Although at two removes, these memories flicker in and out like a weak radio signal.

Howard had epilepsy, a condition which was little understood in the late 1920's, the era in which most of Howard's story takes place. Howard is presented with a stark choice that results in his making a fateful decision. How things come full circle is up to the reader to interpret, and will probably involve the reader bringing something to the experience of reading the book, which is tied up in ideas of time, life, relativity, death, Eastern thought, and the afterlife.

The sections revolving around Howard are the most fascinating. Maybe as compensation for his disease, Howard is gifted with a remarkable feeling for and attunement with nature. These passages, in which he drives his mule cart, taking in the colors, and smells of nature, the play of light, the connection of living things, are nothing short of beautiful. At such times, a broadly read reader will think of Faulkner or Woolf. ( )