Literary Fiction · MelancholicA dying clock repairer remembers his father, a traveling tinker in rural Maine
Tinkers
by Paul Harding
A dying clock repairer remembers his father, a traveling peddler, in his last days
George Washington Crosby, a clock repairer, lies dying at home with his family, drifting in and out of consciousness. His memories return to his hard childhood in Maine and to his father, an epileptic traveling peddler, and his grandfather, a Methodist preacher who struggled with madness. A lyrical novel about love, loss, illness, faith and the natural world.
More about this book
Who
George Washington Crosby, an elderly clock repairman who is dying, and his father, Howard, a tinker who travels with a donkey-drawn cart selling household goods and lives with epilepsy.
World
New England, in the last days of George's life, mixed with his memories of childhood.
What makes it different
It is Paul Harding's debut novel. George's memories move between his own life and his father's, and clock repair is central to who he is. Bellevue Literary Press, a small publisher, issued it in 2009 as a 191-page hardcover, and it was the first Pulitzer-winning novel from a small press since A Confederacy of Dunces in 1981.
Feel
Lyrical and literary, about death, fathers and sons, solitude and connection, and the simple pleasures of nature. It won the 2010 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.