Book Review

[kenjari]

Tinkers
by Paul Harding

This novel is beautiful and melancholy. It is a poetic journey through the thoughts and dreams of George Washington Crosby as he lays dying of old age and illness in a hospital bed in his house. He is surrounded by his family, but it is mainly of his impoverished childhood in rural Maine that he thinks of. He is occupied especially with memories and imaginings of his father Howard, who worked as a peddler and tinker in the backwoods, and who left the family when George was about 12.
Harding's writing is gorgeous, with beautiful descriptions of the natural world and carefully subtle evocations of the relationships between people. Tinkers is suffused with loss, death, and the effects of time. Yet it is gently mournful rather than depressing or tragic. Its mood lingers on long after I've turned the last page.

Comments

[cerridwynn.livejournal.com]

I'm reading this now and i have about 10 pages left and i want to read so slowly so it lasts longer!

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

I was also torn between reading more and reading slower. I did end up reading several passages twice, the better to savor and absorb them. I'm still haunted by some of the images and scenes: the hermit in the woods, Howard's fugue state in the fields with the grass and the wildflowers, the imagining of a woman contemplating suicide via ice-covered pond, and the bit about the grandfather clock and the grandchildren.
I also really liked the way George's own family (not the one he grew up in) and their relationships were portrayed: neither dramatically dysfunctional nor blissfully idyllic. They seemed so beautifully real.