Sunday, June 26, 2011

Indie Books

"George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died." Such is the beginning,  the story of George and his father. Tinkers, by Paul Harding, won  the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. It is his debut novel.

Paragraphs are pages long.
Narratives are  jumbled; present and  past interwoven.
Third person  switches to first person.
Time passes, the clock stops,  hours are relived.

We learn about his life, George's, his father's, his children and grandchildren, his attempt to understand them, to record his thoughts and discover his words and the sound of his voice were nothing like he anticipated. We feel the weight of a life, the weight of regret, the times and places that defined that life.

We learn how to see clearly. How to take things apart and put them together, how clocks work, how pain and chill feel, how family and ties bind and strangle too.
We learn that language is a marvelous tool.

This is a first novel!
"Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss and the fierce beauty of nature." {Book jacket}


8 comments:

  1. Winning the Pulitzer with a first novel is an amazing accomplishment!

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  2. I'm going to get this one. I appreciate good book suggestions.

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  3. The more I explore and use language, the more fascinated I am. It is indeed a marvelous tool. Thanks for the opinion about the book; it sounds like a poignant story of family and life, and I will read it as soon as I can buy or borrow a copy.

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  4. On my List, Rosaria -- many thanks. Sounds like a book to have in your hand and not on a Kindle!!

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  5. wow. any book that plays with the concept of time will be on my to read list. thanks for this heads up rosaria - quite the accomplishment to win a pulitzer for anyone, lest a first time author!

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  6. This sounds fascinating. Reminded me in a way of The Poisonwood Bible. Kingsolver was brilliant with her use of words and taking people apart in it. Sentences running forward and back.

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  7. This must be the "school notes" blog you mentioned in your comment. I enjoy both blogs very much and want to check out your other also.

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