Tinkers

While the Booker committee has made a habit of laying eggs of late, the Pulitzer has selected an impressive collection of literary gems. Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Edward Jones' The Known World, Junot Diaz's Oscar Wao and, now, Paul Harding's Tinkers represent what great literature is all about. I was only 20 pages into this book when I felt the overwhelming presence of Marilynne Robinson. Lo and behold, upon reading a Wikipedia entry on the author I found that he studied with Robinson at the Iowa Writers Workshop. The similarities with Gilead are strong, but not obtrusively so. I would categorize Tinkers as a more experimentally daring Gilead, or perhaps a more transcendental Gilead. The narrative is more disjointed in keeping with the protagonist's hallucinatory final illness, so the experimental nature is not gratuitous. And while Gilead was chock full of good ol' conventional Sunday religion, Tinkers tends to be more mystical and perhaps a bit more melancholy. So who should read this excellent novel? Here you will find no explosions, no cosmic battles, no schools of magic, nobody scurrying about to solve cryptic ciphers. The cast of characters is small but deep; there's no major whodunit here. This is a family saga as told through the final, disjointed memories of a family patriarch in Maine. Like Gilead, the novel consists of the reminiscences of an old man nearing the end of his life. The narrative is not linear; it changes tense, perspective and tone with few signposts for the reader. But if you like a literary challenge, if you like the previous Pulitzer winners and if you enjoy poetic use of the English language along the lines of Marilynne Robinson, you will enjoy this novel. It's a major achievement.

I will read 1,000 more books because I hope that one of them will be the equal of Tinkers. This is poetic prose at its finest. It took me a long time to read such a small book, because I read every sentence twice, thrice, pausing to gaze off into the distance after each unbelievable paragraph, astounded that the author was writing about me, who is, of course, every man and woman. I will read it again, and again. I am most proud that my son gave it to me, because it touched him so. I will in turn give it to my daughter, and special friends.

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.