Tinkers is the story of a family. The first (but also last) patriarch is George, who is dying. His family gathers around him as he fades away, hallucinates and experiences the last epileptic seizures of his life. It is a sweet and sad picture of a family as George's grandchildren read to him and shave his stubble and he recalls pieces of his life but is unable to speak and share them.
The omniscient, lyrical narrator alternates from George's death bed to his childhood home and his father, Howard. George tinkered with clocks in his retirement. Howard was a tinker by trade, fixing household items and selling wares from a mule-drawn wagon through the forests and farms. The reader also hears bits about Howard's father, a country preacher who wrote beautifully but was a bore at the pulpit. The families are different and fascinating. Epilepsy is hereditary and each generation reacts differently. Despite medical advances, the seizures are still shocking and sometimes frightening for the men who suffer from it and their loved ones.
The book is honest poetry. Sometimes Paul Harding's language is the cold meter of the cosmos, sometimes the warm and comforting rhyme of the grass and sunshine. I was lost in Harding's wandering poetic musings and detailed descriptions of clocks and tinkery items. It's been a while since I've read something written with such care.
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