"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}
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}