The risk seems minimal, however, because author Paul Harding's first sentence informs his readers that the story begins 8 days before the death of its central character, retired high school guidance counselor and clock-repairer, George Washington Crosby.
From there the story moves backward and forward in time, much in the manner of George's deathbed hallucinations. "George Crosby remembered many things as he died, but in an order he could not control."
In fact, the entire book is a stream of consciousness recollection of George's life and that of his oddball father, Howard, a "tinker" who drove a horse-drawn wagon down country roads and lanes, pedaling soap, needles, tobacco, and other household necessities. Periodically, Howard is beset by epileptic seizure's that tear his world apart and prompt him to ponder life's mysteries.
The narrative shifts in time, changes perspective, omits quotation marks entirely, and returns again and again to George on his deathbed, as his last eight days of life run down like one of the many antique clocks he lovingly restored. Life itself, the author seems to suggest, is a complex clockwork of inter-related gears and springs, in which small motions are magnified and transfered across time. Sometimes the whole machine "whirs with brass logic," and other times faulty alignments may cause it to "squeak and gibber."
For George's father Howard, the clockwork mechanism of the universe periodically flew to pieces when his grand mal seizures transported him from his day-to-day world into an alternate existence in which he communed with nature, wrote poetry, and speculated on the meaning of life. While his family sat at the dinner table, their food untouched, waiting for his return.
Howard thinks of his epileptic seizures as bolts of lightning that, in striking him, cause the mysterious curtain of existence to be briefly lifted, allowing him tantalizing glimpses of what lies on the other side. Deep questions for an uneducated tinker to ponder, and not at all the sort of stuff that interests his bitter and long-suffering wife. The lightning metaphor is repeated throughout the book, and son George is even struck by a literal bolt of it as he builds the house in which we find him on his deathbed at the book's beginning.
This book barely saw the light of day, by the way, let alone winning a Pulitzer Prize eariler this year to the surprise of almost everyone. Tinkers is Harding's first published novel, and it was rejected by agent after agent and publisher after publisher. In the end, it was picked up by the tiny Indy publisher, Bellevue Literary Press, and sold all of 7,000 copies before winning the prize.
Though hardly a blockbuster, Harding's book became a favorite of independent booksellers, and through one of them was brought to the attention of Rebecca Pepper Sinkler, chair of this year's Pulitzer fiction committee.
I'm only half way through, but I'm loving it.
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Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Senior Content Strategist
Twitter: david_perrotta
