Tinkers

• Paul Harding
• Amazon Link

This was one of the easiest book selections that I have made. It was that time of year (April) when the Pulitzer Prize winners are announced and Paul Harding's Tinker had taken the top spot for 2010. It was written by a guy who was exactly my age and was a drummer in an alternative band called "Cold Water Flat" for 7 years. Furthermore it was less than 200 pages and I could probably read it in the time it would take to watch a Bollywood movie. And most important, the mother of all reasons for making this a painless selection - it was recommended by my wife, Sangeeta.

The style of the book is very interesting and after reading it I can see why it was rejected by many mainstream publishers. For the first 70 odd pages, I couldn't quite fathom where the author was taking me. After that the fog lifted and I could better appreciate the story; maybe I just got used to his style of writing. The sentences are long and convoluted and often-times, I found myself re-reading the sentences to figure out who the real subject of the sentence was. Maybe the author was charged a penny for each full-stop that he put down! Despite all this, Harding's command of the written word is evident in every page whether he is telling a story of the Crosby's or precisely describing the inner gears in a clock, or a bird's perspective on how to build a nest. There are also fake quotations from a made up book called "The Reasonable Horologist" that delve even further into the mysteries and workings of past and present clocks.

The book opens with George Crosby on his deathbed, precisely 8 days prior to his death; the 8 days is the magical number that the clock takes to wind down as well. The story alternates between George and his father Howard, and through the telling of their story, Harding makes us appreciate the world of clocks, nature, epileptic seizures, building of nests, etc. While this book is certainly not for everyone, I can say that it is one that I will possibly read again to better appreciate some of the nuances that I most certainly missed in my first reading.