Books

Praise for Tinkers

"There are few perfect debut American novels. Walter Percy's The Moviegoer and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird come to mind. So does Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping. To this list ought to be added Paul Harding's devastating first book, Tinkers, the story of a dying man drifting back in time to his hardscrabble New England childhood, growing up the son of his clock-making father. Harding has written a masterpiece around the truism that all of us, even surrounded by family, die alone." —John Freeman, NPR's The Best Debut Fiction of 2009

"Slim but powerful, Tinkers puts a new spin on the father-son relationship and makes Harding an author to watch." —Foreword Magazine

"Tinkers does not have a plot in the traditional sense. Instead, Harding winds the gears and cogs of memories and experiences and lets them turn for the reader’s consideration. The story comes in layers and images, the recollections of a dying man who, like Harding, is in no hurry to get where he’s going. This excellent debut proves Harding to be a writer of exceptional poise, possessing clear-eyed skill and, like his characters, a steady hand for the finest of details." —The Rumpus.net

"In Paul Harding's stunning first novel, we find what readers, writers and reviewers live for: a new way of seeing, in a story told as a series of ruminative images, like a fanned card deck." —San Francisco Chronicle

"The most memorable parts of Harding’s novel may be his depiction of a nineteenth-century landscape complete with mule-drawn carts and “frozen wood so brittle that it rang when you split it.” In Harding’s skillful evocation, Crosby’s life, seen from its final moments, becomes a mosaic of memories, “showing him a different self every time he tried to make an assessment." —The New Yorker  

"Harding is a first-rate writer, and his fascination with what makes his characters tick recommends him as a philosopher, as well. At its mahogany outer shell, Tinkers is a novel about the way families lay down unimpeachable tracks on future generations. But in its inner chamber, it’s about the way the mind fetishizes the smallest acts—the gears that keep life trued—even as our bodies enter a final winter." —Time Out Chicago

"Every so often (and this must happen to you too) a writer describes something so well -- snow, oranges, dirt -- that you can smell it or feel it or sense it in the room. The writing does what all those other art forms do -- evoke the essence of the thing. In this astonishing novel, Paul Harding creates a New England childhood, beginning with the landscape. And he does this, miracle of miracles, through the mind of another human being -- not himself, someone else." —Los Angeles Times

"Writing with breathtaking lyricism and tenderness, Harding has created a rare and beautiful novel of spiritual inheritance and acute psychological and metaphysical suspense." —Booklist

“[An] outstanding debut…. The real star is Harding’s language, which dazzles whether he’s describing the workings of clocks, sensory images of nature, the many engaging side characters who populate the book, or even a short passage on how to build a bird nest. This is an especially gorgeous example of novelistic craftsmanship.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Tinkers is truly remarkable. It achieves and sustains a unique fusion of language and perception. Its fine touch plays over the textured richnesses of very modest lives, evoking again and again a frisson of deep recognition, a sense of primal encounter with the brilliant, elusive world of the senses. It confers on the reader the best privilege fiction can afford, the illusion of ghostly proximity to other human souls." —Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gilead and Home

"Tinkers is a remarkable piece of work... I particularly admire the balancing act between the visionary and ecstatic and the exquisitely precise. [It is] fascinating—and sometimes horrific—to read, and is cumulatively moving because it is woven together into the single quilt of our humanity." —Barry Unsworth, Booker Prize-winning author of The Ruby in Her Navel

"Paul Harding's Tinkers is not just a novel—though it is a brilliant novel. It's an instruction manual on how to look at nearly everything. Harding takes the back off to show you the miraculous ticking of the natural world, the world of clocks, generations of family, an epileptic brain, the human soul. In astounding language sometimes seemingly struck by lightning, sometimes as tight and complicated as clockwork, Harding shows how enormous fiction can be, and how economical. Read this book and marvel." —Elizabeth McCracken, author of Niagara Falls All Over Again