RollnSmoke Reviews: Tinkers by Paul Harding

Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press, 2009)

The 2009 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Literature and Harding’s debut novel features an old man, George – a collector of old clocks -- who is dying at home, among his family, slipping in and out of consciousness. In the final eight days of his life, his hallucinations fix on memories of his early childhood, especially on his “mad father whom he loved and pitied and adored” who tinkers about New England in a wagon loaded with household goods, who suffers from grand mal epileptic seizures and who disappears one day when George is still a boy. Finally, George’s memories – a respite from his dying -- somehow meld with his father’s memories of his own mentally ill father, and family truths are revealed in the final moments of George’s life. The diction is precise and poetic and the New England landscape is itself a character, the writing like Robert Frost in novel form. The pace is quiet and plodding, requiring a reader’s patience and keen attention (8/10).