Tinkers (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Harding's outstanding debut unfurls the history and final thoughts of a dying grandfather surrounded by his family in his New England home. George Washington Crosby repairs clocks for a living and on his deathbed revisits his turbulent childhood as the oldest son of an epileptic smalltime traveling salesman. The descriptions of the father's epilepsy and the cold halo of chemical electricity that encircled him immediately before he was struck by a full seizure are stunning, and the household's sadness permeates the narrative as George returns to more melancholy scenes. The real star is Harding's language, which dazzles whether he's describing the workings of clocks, sensory images of nature, the many engaging side characters who populate the book, or even a short passage on how to build a bird nest. This is an especially gorgeous example of novelistic craftsmanship. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* A tinker is a mender, and in Harding’s spellbinding debut, he imagines the old, mendable horse-and-carriage world. The objects of the past were more readily repaired than our electronics, but the living world was a mystery, as it still is, as it always will be. And so in this rhapsodic novel of impending death, Harding considers humankind’s contrary desires to conquer the “imps of disorder” and to be one with life, fully meshed within the great glimmering web. In the present, George lies on his death bed in the Massachusetts house he built himself, surrounded by family and the antique clocks he restores. George loves the precision of fine timepieces, but now he is at the mercy of chaotic forces and seems to be channeling his late father, Howard, a tinker and a mystic whose epileptic seizures strike like lightning. Howard, in turn, remembers his “strange and gentle” minister father. Each man is extraordinarily porous to nature and prone to becoming “unhitched” from everyday human existence and entering a state of ecstasy, even transcendence. Writing with breathtaking lyricism and tenderness, Harding has created a rare and beautiful novel of spiritual inheritance and acute psychological and metaphysical suspense. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press (January 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 193413712X
• ISBN-13: 978-1934137123
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #36,578 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful well-crafted story, December 10, 2008

By	Sandra J. Spinks "Skimbleshanks" (Brighton, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Tinkers
From the first sentance of the first paragraph you will not be able to stop reading this book. It is a simple story with breathtaking passages that will make you pause to take in what you have read. It is highly descriptive, imaginative and constructed word, by sentance by paragraph into a compelling story about a family through one man's eyes. All the intergenerational complexities without the baggage.
Buy one for yourself, give one to your friends and bring one to your next book club meeting. You will be able to then say. I discovered this new writer who is going to be one of the best in the new century.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book to which you will return time and again to savor a word, a line, a passage..., December 24, 2008

By	Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia (Newton, Ma USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It is so fitting that this beautiful book - likely to be a favorite of yours, much as mine, one to which you will return time and again to savor a word, a line, a passage which you simply had to see again; in order to reveal new layers of meaning with every reading - has come out into the open during the holiday season. What book could possibly be better to curl up with during this season of brotherly love, than Paul Harding's "Tinkers"?

Even while this book has the propensity to appeal to any reader in its simply lovely recounting of a touching tale of generations of family, along with other vividly rendered lives met along the way, "Tinkers" is a profound, empathic and soulful work of art as well, replete with the most stunning descriptions, written in both tight as well as strikingly beautiful language, all of which blend together to create the sense of a whisper of holiness emanating from within nature and humanity.

I am reminded of a traditional blessing which is meant to be recited when one encounters a crowd of six hundred thousand people. The blessing praises God as `Sage of Secrets'. The intention being, that only God has the capacity to truly comprehend the individual cosmology of each and every one of the many souls on earth. Well, in writing `Tinkers', I believe that Paul Harding has humbly shown himself to be one who naturally emulates this divine trait, who is that empathic. With tender awareness and precision of language, Harding's heart shines through, in this brilliant, existential, and profoundly human work of literature, to reveal to us, in the sense of true revelation, the different souls who inhabit this book. He is so finely attuned to the human condition in all of its complexity, in all of its varied individual experiences, that Paul Harding can truly be called, "Sage of Secrets".

Harding's generosity of spirit reverberates throughout, as he guides us from a man hallucinating on his death bed, the very bed seeming to crash inwards as into a tomb of sorts which acts as a vortex for the fabric of all his personal history and ultimately that of the entire cosmos, into the souls of generations of men in this story, who seem to be tinkering with and studying the mechanisms of the world - of the cosmos, of nature, of epileptic seizures, of illness, of humanity, of mind, of belief, of inflation and deflation of ego, of clockwork, of time, of space, of hearts, of souls, of families, of love, of will, of loyalty... - in myriad ways, trying to make sense of it all, reaching for some grasp of how `it' works, wondering the extent to which they have impact, where they are in it all, whether through grappling in sermons, blending into nature, human interaction, providing healing and solace, supplying material needs, fixing household items, mending clocks... even as their thoughts seem to leak into each other's souls through a mystical connection of sorts which defies conventions such as time, as voice, as proximity, as life, as death... And into the souls as well, of - a haggard country wife whose will has broken; a hermit who doesn't speak, with whom a lovely silent ritual is forged; an ambivalent wife and mother; a chatty devoted wife; a dedicated grandson with conflicted thoughts; a child with slowed development; to name but a few, and even the perspectives of fish, of flies, of a cat, of a dog...

And finally, the description of how to make a nest, seemed to me to speak, in its loving detail, of the yearning for a home, and what a real home might caringly be constructed of on so many levels. Beautiful!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I have read in years, December 26, 2008

By	Joanna E. Lawler "booklover" (Roslindale, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I loved this book. Yes, as the reviews state, the writing is excellent, but more than that, the story and characters are amazing. It has the unique gift of being incredibly moving without being maudlin. You feel like you know the characters and they are part of your family. I am traditionally a mystery/suspense buff so I actually wasn't sure I would like this, but I was more than pleasantly surprised. It was one of those books you become jealous of the people who have not read it yet because you want to experience that feeling again. Don't miss this reading experience.