Tinkers

Tinkers is a prize-winning book that I actually liked.  It won the Pulitzer.  It is also a first novel that I liked. However, is not the first book by an Iowa Writers Workshop participant that I liked.  When Paul Harding tried to sell his book, publishers told him that it moved way too slow for today's readers, that no one wanted to read a contemplative book.

Well, I guess some people like reading meditative reflections.  I can think of Annie Dillard or Per Petterson, authors I have enjoyed.  I also enjoyed the French movie To Be and To Have which moseys along at the speed of the turtle at the beginning of the film.  I think it depends upon the quality of the meditation.  I'm not fond of a book just because it is slow.

The language of this short novel is delicious. "Light filtered down from the sky in various amounts. The branches of maples and oaks and birch leaned across the road toward one another and intertwined and became nearly indistinguishable, their leaves mixed up, apparently sharing common branches, as if, after so many mingled seasons, the trees had grafted into one another and become a single plant that produced the leaves of several species."