I’ve always found the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction a reliable marker of top quality, indeed I can’t recall the last winner that disappointed me. So it pains me to report that this year’s winner, Tinkers by Paul Harding, is ambitious and brimming with literary brio, but ultimately a rather ordinary read. Anchored by the last days of a clock repairer, dying with his children and grandchildren around him, this slim volume oscillates between feverish dementia, minutely detailed memories, and the story of the dying man’s father, who travelled the countryside in his tinker’s cart and suffered epileptic fits of frightening force. With the courage of Faulkner, Harding wheels through different times, tenses and writing modes, digressing at will and indulging in brilliant set pieces of description. The writing manages to impress and puzzle at the same time, a judgement that echoes my overall reading experience. At times I was bedazzled, some sections were hypnotically brilliant, and then disorientation or boredom set in. A tour de force that never quite makes it, Tinkersfails to cohere as a complete narrative.
Impressive but dissipated. 2½ stars.