(Paul Harding, 2009)

Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Tinkers is the story of a man on his deathbed, falling inside himself to recount the memories of his childhood that involve his epileptic father. While sweet in its examination of the trials of life and death, Harding’s simple writing style also gives way to a haunting & melancholy tone. The metaphor of the universe as a clock — we as ants marching across a face of time that we can only wonder at the immensity of, while below us, unknowingly, gears and mechanisms spin and turn, guiding the meaning our lives — is beautiful in its simplicity. A lot like Cunningham’s The Hours, Tinkers brings together a small cast of characters (this time men) who discover fear, regret, and helplessness in a regressive movement of time through memory. Harding has a great ability to describe in a new way the universal curiosities of all of us — those about nature, disease, fatherhood, and life & death.

I can’t recommend this book enough. I absolutely adore it. It’s simple, heartbreaking, life-affirming, and magical. Perfect with a glass of white zin, a shawl, a brooch and a wood-burning fireplace. Don’t finish it while in public. You’ll want to let yourself cry it out and relish in the sweet & depressing emotion of it!

Notable excerpt:

Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife… rejoice that your uncertainty is God’s will… and part of a greater certainty… be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world…