Tinkers (novel)

Tinkers is a novel by the American musician and author Paul Harding. With his debut, he won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize.

Action

An old man is dying. The reader will find him surrounded by his family at his home in Maine, had with him his last days and accompanied him repeatedly in his memories through his past life, through his humble childhood, the landscape of Maine and gets to know his father, who still as ' Tinker ', as tinkers and traveling salesman, with mule and cart through the area moved.

George Washington Crosby, the protagonist of the novel begins to hallucinate in the last days of his life. In his performances, he sees the walls and ceiling of his house, fall down the sky and the stars up. As he buried himself provides, among ticking clocks, old photographs and rusted tool, his past life in a flash flood of disordered memories pours.

He sees his late passion for watches, with whom he not only made ​​money, but it also opened up the universe. He sees his poor but adventurous childhood, his overland traveling with his father Howard epileptic seizures that made him great anxiety or the hermit Gilbert, his father brings tobacco into the wilderness once a year. After forty-eight hours unconsciousness George wakes up one last time. He dies with a memory of Christmas 1953.

Criticism and reception

The novel was published in 2009 in the U.S.. He was previously before already some publishers who showed no interest. A young small publisher finally decided for the publication. This was followed by the award of the Pulitzer Prize and many positive Commendations in the English literary world. " Tinkers is not a sensational new book, but one that stands out in style and theme. Haunting and emotional, without ever falling into kitsch regions ... "

Tinkers is an unusual book. It's about the memories of an old man on his deathbed. Also unusual is the author. [ ... ] The narrow band of the American Paul Harding has little action is contemplative, meditative, of extraordinary linguistic beauty. [ ... ] When asked about the lack of action in his novel, Harding said in the journal Harvard Book Review that his act was not particularly interested. "When you have a good person, you do not need a lot of action "

" Paul Harding waived not a characteristic of postmodern literary creation, and after reading you have to have to digest the feeling of pure innovation loose artificiality. [ ... ] The part of the English-language criticism highlighted, poetry of the text ' exhausted in a few places. [ ... ] dominate tried, strange, helpless turns, in which the renowned brave fighting translator Sivia Morawetz probably the hair stood on end. [ ... ] Paul Harding, who follows the iron laws of his profession and long sits on the sequel to his first novel, has still some work to do. "

The Pulitzer Prize jury described in its grounds, among others, the novel as " a powerful celebration of life, in which father and son overcome by joy and sorrow her captive life and perceive the new world and the dying. "