tinkers by Paul Harding
Publication date/ Length: 2009 / 191 pages
Synopsis (from the back cover): An old man lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature.
First line: “George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died.”
Review: This little novel is truly a gem. I love reading a work that compels me to pause and admire the prose. Tinkers demands this sort of admiration and attention. The premise is interesting, but the true gift of this novel is the writing. Any attempt I would make to “describe” this novel would fall woefully short, so I will let Harding’s words do the reviewing for me.
First, two passages concerning the sky and nature:
There was the sky, filled with flat-topped clouds, cruising like a fleet of anvils across the blue. George had the watery, raw feeling of being outdoors when you are sick. The clouds halted, paused for an instant, and plummeted onto his head
And the way the clouds moved, mostly invisible, above the canopy of trees, now revealing the full light of the sun, now obscuring it, now diffusing it, reflecting it, and the way it sparkled and trickled and gushed and flooded and spun, and the way the wind dispersed it even more among the flickering leaves and twitching grass, all combined to make Howard feel as if he were walking through a kaleidoscope. It was as if the sky and the ground were turning end over end in front of him, around in a circle, so that the earth, as it swung up over the sky, dropped leaves and spears of grass and wildflowers and tree branches into the blueness and, as it rolled back down toward its proper place, in turn, received a precipitation of clouds and light and wind and sun from the sky. Sky and earth were now where they belonged, now side by side, now inverted, and now righted again in one seamless, silent spinning.
And a passage about how freeing a healthy relationship can be after years trapped in a silent, passive-aggressive marriage:
He lifted his nose from a crate of limes, refreshed and eager to get home to a wife who spoke words out loud as she thought them up and held nothing to whirl and eddy and collect in brackish silences, silences that broke like thin ice beneath you to announce your drowning.
I love novels that not only demand I pay attention to the syntax, but make me rethink or see anew some aspect of life, whether the sky, feeling ill, or unhealthy relationships. Harding’s novel may be slight physically, but what it encompasses is weighty and substantial and refreshing. Highly recommended!
I’m hosting a giveaway on my Sunday Salon post today. I plan to give away two $10 gift cards to Amazon on Easter Sunday. I hope you will stop by and sign up!
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