- Paperback: 191 pages
- Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press (21 Feb 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 193413712X
- ISBN-13: 978-1934137123
- Product Dimensions: 17.7 x 12.5 x 1.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 552,409 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Tinkers
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Pulitzer Prize
American Library Association Notable Book
PEN / Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers Award
"In Paul Harding's stunning first novel, we find what readers, writers and reviewers live for."--"San Francisco Chronicle"
"There are few perfect debut American novels. Walter Percy's "The Moviegoer" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" come to mind. So does Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping." To this list ought to be added Paul Harding's devastating first book, "Tinkers." . . . Harding has written a masterpiece." --John Freeman, National Public Radio
""Tinkers" is truly remarkable. It achieves and sustains a unique fusion of language and perception. Its fine touch plays over the textured richnesses of very modest lives, evoking again and again a frisson of deep recognition, a sense of primal encounter with the brilliant, elusive world of the senses. It confers on the reader the best privilege fiction can afford, the illusion of ghostly proximity to other human souls." --Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Home, Gilead, " and "Housekeeping"
"["Tinkers" is] a novel that you'll want to savor. . . . I found reading it to be an incredibly moving experience." --Nancy Pearl
An old man lies dying. Propped up in his living room and surrounded by his children and grandchildren, George Washington Crosby drifts in and out of consciousness, back to the wonder and pain of his impoverished childhood in Maine. As the clock repairer's time winds down, his memories intertwine with those of his father, an epileptic, itinerant peddler and his grandfather, a Methodist preacher beset by madness. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, "Tinkers" is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, illness, faith, and the fierce beauty of nature.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Before I begin this review, I'd like to acknowledge that I am almost certainly wrong. A book that has won so many plaudits, including the Pulitzer Prize, must be a great book. Readers more intelligent than me will probably consider me a philistine or a fool, most likely both. However, my mixed reaction to reading Tinkers is at odds with the universal praise that has been heaped on this short novel.
Let's start with the overwhelming positive - there are many parts of the book for which the prose is beautiful, really beautiful, with a texture that few writers can match. From the lightness of touch in Howard's daily appreciation of nature to the visceral description of the epileptic fit on Christmas day; for these passages alone it is worth reading the book.
My main gripe with this book is that, in places, it feels incredibly `loose'. For every beautiful passage there is another which only confuses. In these it feels as if the book has been written with the primary aim of being poetic, rather than communicating a message to the reader. Whilst not in itself the worst of literary crimes, for a book to be truly great it should do both, preferably achieving the latter with skilful use of the former. Too often it feels like a collection of well written exercises, without sufficient glue to hold them together as a single novel. At its worst it felt unstructured and, well, a bit messy. Perhaps I'm a bit dim, but most of the themes didn't work for me, and I can't help feel that a couple of steps away from poetry and towards fiction would make the book more complete without diminishing any of the beauty.
The book's eulogisers have a number of defences from which they can counter my concerns; it is a book about a hallucinating dying man; poetic licence; that the lack of exactitude is a metaphor for death itself; etc etc. However, all of these fail to pass muster. Similarly poetic books manage to feel tighter, with more direct themes, more meaning and a more complete finished article than this (`The Quickening Maze' by Adam Foulds and `The Sea' by John Banville are two that come to mind).
In conclusion, the line between genius and the emperor's new clothes is a fine one, but the ability to only write beautiful prose does not necessarily mean the book is a masterpiece.
Let's start with the overwhelming positive - there are many parts of the book for which the prose is beautiful, really beautiful, with a texture that few writers can match. From the lightness of touch in Howard's daily appreciation of nature to the visceral description of the epileptic fit on Christmas day; for these passages alone it is worth reading the book.
My main gripe with this book is that, in places, it feels incredibly `loose'. For every beautiful passage there is another which only confuses. In these it feels as if the book has been written with the primary aim of being poetic, rather than communicating a message to the reader. Whilst not in itself the worst of literary crimes, for a book to be truly great it should do both, preferably achieving the latter with skilful use of the former. Too often it feels like a collection of well written exercises, without sufficient glue to hold them together as a single novel. At its worst it felt unstructured and, well, a bit messy. Perhaps I'm a bit dim, but most of the themes didn't work for me, and I can't help feel that a couple of steps away from poetry and towards fiction would make the book more complete without diminishing any of the beauty.
The book's eulogisers have a number of defences from which they can counter my concerns; it is a book about a hallucinating dying man; poetic licence; that the lack of exactitude is a metaphor for death itself; etc etc. However, all of these fail to pass muster. Similarly poetic books manage to feel tighter, with more direct themes, more meaning and a more complete finished article than this (`The Quickening Maze' by Adam Foulds and `The Sea' by John Banville are two that come to mind).
In conclusion, the line between genius and the emperor's new clothes is a fine one, but the ability to only write beautiful prose does not necessarily mean the book is a masterpiece.
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
To pass the time waiting at yet another airport gate, I took the book TINKERS by Paul Harding with me. His debut novel, it was published in January 2009 and has 192 pages, a small book indeed, but a forceful, spellbinding and impressive one, a book leading to contemplation and soul-searching. The story tells about a tinker, Howard, a man mending broken pots and pans, a man standing for a vanished lifestyle, when time appeared to run at a slower pace and yet the days were full.
Weaving back and forth from the past to the present, it is also the story about another man, the late tinker's son George, who is slowly dying, in the house he built and amidst his family and all his lovingly repaired antique clocks, his entire life achievements if you will. The book deals with the relationship between a father and a son, and although Harding writes in great prose about the subject of the last days of life and impending death, it is truly a comforting book, somehow giving the reader solace by knowing what a rich and fulfilled life the main characters enjoyed. A moving and spiritual story.
13 April 2010. With his book TINKERS Paul Harding won the Pulitzer Price for Fiction today.
Weaving back and forth from the past to the present, it is also the story about another man, the late tinker's son George, who is slowly dying, in the house he built and amidst his family and all his lovingly repaired antique clocks, his entire life achievements if you will. The book deals with the relationship between a father and a son, and although Harding writes in great prose about the subject of the last days of life and impending death, it is truly a comforting book, somehow giving the reader solace by knowing what a rich and fulfilled life the main characters enjoyed. A moving and spiritual story.
13 April 2010. With his book TINKERS Paul Harding won the Pulitzer Price for Fiction today.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A first novel published without fanfare that wins the Pulitzer Prize - can it really be that good?
The answer is a resounding Yes.
George Crosby is coming to the end of his long life. As he lays dying the essence of that life is revealed to us, in particular his relationship with his father Howard, a tinker in rural new England in the 1920s. The scene is set for an exploration of family relationships, personal growth and social change.
This is a moving book of many moods and styles. There are sections of great old-fashioned plot-driven story telling and subtle explorations of character. There are also some demanding passages of philosophical thinking and beautifully poetic descriptions of the natural world. Such is the power and precision of Harding's prose that he manages to reveal in short novel what it might take a lesser writer hundreds of pages to reveal. Recommended.
The answer is a resounding Yes.
George Crosby is coming to the end of his long life. As he lays dying the essence of that life is revealed to us, in particular his relationship with his father Howard, a tinker in rural new England in the 1920s. The scene is set for an exploration of family relationships, personal growth and social change.
This is a moving book of many moods and styles. There are sections of great old-fashioned plot-driven story telling and subtle explorations of character. There are also some demanding passages of philosophical thinking and beautifully poetic descriptions of the natural world. Such is the power and precision of Harding's prose that he manages to reveal in short novel what it might take a lesser writer hundreds of pages to reveal. Recommended.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
My favourite book of recent years
For me, the way a story is written is more important than the main storyline - in much the same way as Van Gogh's paintings of (just) sunflowers can hold the attention. Read more
Published 2 months ago by BrynG
Oh dear, another lemon
Tinkers is at once a promising first novel and simultaneously a disjointed and unfulfilling read.
Old man dying in bed, very little humour, I feel it's all been done... Read more
Old man dying in bed, very little humour, I feel it's all been done... Read more
Published 4 months ago by a nice guy who likes reading
Another Prize-Winner Than Did Nothng For Me
Ranganathan's third law of librarianship coined the phrase "every book its reader," which is something I had to keep reminding myself as I read this slender Pulitzer-winning novel. Read more
Published 9 months ago by A. Ross
Rythmic style
The lyrical style of this book is excellent and as an experiment in the beauty and power of words it works. Read more
Published 10 months ago by D. J. Andrews
When style gets in the way of substance
Telling the story of an old man's dying memories including the hard life of his own father, a tinker in New England, "Tinkers" is never going to be a barrel of laughs. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Ripple
tinkers
I enjoyed this book but it is definately not a laugh a minute. The plot is a little confusing in places so choose a time when you can concentrate. Read more
Published 12 months ago by sarah adams
A Wonderful Debut
Given that Tinkers by Paul Harding runs only for 191 pages, it is a hugely ambitious novel and a tour de force that Harding broadly succeeds in what appears to be his aim. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Herman Norford
Complex and Literary
"Tinkers" is a short novel that won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, the first debut novel coming from a small publishing company to do so in over a quarter of a century. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Dr. Bojan Tunguz
Don't judge a book by a Booker prize.
Sometimes I find that a book which is a winner of a few serious awards disappoints me as a reader. "Tinkers" is a prime example of this. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Lola
Vaguely unsatisfying
READ SOME INTERESTING BLURB ON THIS NOVEL AND THOUGHT THE BASIC PREMISE WAS AN INTERESTING ONE. DIDN'T LIVE UP TO MY EXPECTATIONS DESPITE THE UNDENIABLE POWER AND QUALITY OF... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Mrs. Catherine Mcginn
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