Book Review: Tinkers by Paul Harding

I'm not going to lie, I picked up this book because: 1) It looked pretty and 2) It won the Pulitzer Prize. The first reason is an awful reason to pick a book, the second one isn't, since I've come to realize that most Pulitzer Prize winning books are pretty good.

I then looked at the back cover and read that the writer, Paul Harding, got his MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. My cousin informed me that the University of Iowa, where the workshop is located, puts out AMAZING writers. They are to modern fiction and literature as Yale is to law and Julliard is to performing arts. This is hard to believe, since I didn't know Iowa was THAT good at anything, excluding corn. But at the end of the day I trust my computer science, published poet, magazine editor, turned lawyer cousin (if your reading this, I love you Hannah, and please return this book when done)

Wish I had a HD version of this cover

The book starts off with "George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died. From a rented hospital bed, placed in the middle of his living room, he saw the insects running in and out of imaginary cracks in the ceiling plaster". The author gets right into it and sets up the premise pretty well. The book is a mediation on life and dying. It takes you through the mind, sometimes clear sometimes clouded, of a dying clock maker. It's language is powerful and the descriptions of the New England winter is stunning.

One of the main themes covered through the book is the idea of being trapped in your life. I'm a huge fan of the "dreams deferred" theme and this is kind of an off-shoot to that. It is an emotional story that starts that George Washington Crosby's dying process and goes through his life and a lot of the decision he made, with his father suffering from epilepsy. The novel bounces between his recall and what his family is doing at the present time. 

The life of George and the relationship with his father is juxtaposed and contrasted with the story of his son's during George's death. Bouncing between the two stories was confusing, and may take a re-reading of a couple of chapters to get the whole story. 

Harding gives great insight to the process of dying, in the sense that death is a moment, while dying is a journey. The journey through Crosby's life is recounted in amazing detail. You can almost feel the bitter New England snow as if your walking with the characters. You feel for the mental state of Crosby as he dies and recounts these stories in this head. The journey towards death is ever present with most chapters starting with "86 hours before he died, George..." You counted down the hours with the protagonist and as the end draws near, there is a certain sense of calm that descends on George and you feel that he has come to terms with his own mortality. 

There is a major twist in the story and it is set up remarkably well. You would never expect it, but it isn't a plot twist for the sake of one. Harding does an amazing job at rationalizing the twist through the characters, instead of using some think a "deus ex machina" trick to solve the problem. 

Overall, this is one of the better books I've ever read. It is also a fairly short and quick read. Highly recommend it!