Tinkers is a 2009 novel by Paul Harding.
It begins at the deathbed of George Washington Crosby, a former high school teacher and guidance counselor with a sideline in clock repair, who is dying of renal failure. As his condition deteriorates George begins to have hallucinations and strange dreams. Memories pop out of George's mind in random order, mostly dealing with his father Howard, who abandoned the family when George was 12. Other passages follow the POV of Howard, a tinker and explain why he left his family. Howard's POV eventually gets to memories of losing his father, who was taken away when Howard was a boy.
Tropes:
- Anachronic Order: A completely scrambled timeline, as a dying George remembers various moments from his childhood, with similarly scrambled moments from Howard's life interwoven throughout.
- Blade-of-Grass Cut: There are many passages throughout the book that describe the beauty of nature in minute, vivid detail. Here's how the book describes a bloom of spring flowers, as Howard is out on his rounds delivering goods:A late-spring storm capped the last daffodils and the first tulips with dollops of snow, which melted when the sun came back out. The snow seemed to have a bracing effect on the flowers; their roots drank the cold melt, their stalks straightened from the chilly drink; their petals, supple and hale, were spared the brittle coating of a true freeze. The afternoon became warm, and with the warmth the first bees appeared, and each little bee settled in a yellow cup and took suck like a newborn....He crouched to look at a daffodil. Its six-petaled corona was fully unfurled, like a bright miniature sun. A bee crawled in its cup, massaging stigma and anther and style.
- Call-Back: In one of the scenes from Howard's time as an itinerant peddler, he remembers getting a signed, inscribed, first edition of The Scarlet Letter from a customer. Near the end, the last time George is conscious before his death, he tries to tell the family about the book but can't form the words.
- Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Although apparently George never learned it. Howard was an epileptic given to grand mal seizures. His wife eventually decided to have him committed to an asylum, whereupon Howard immediately left town, changed his name, and had no contact with George for some 25 years.
- Disappeared Dad: Two generations of the Crosby family.
- Howard left when George was 12 after Howard, who was an epileptic, learned that his wife was going to have him committed. He showed up unannounced at George's house over a quarter-century later, on Christmas, just to say hello.
- Howard's own father was committed when Howard was a boy, early in the 20th century, after suffering something that sounds like Alzhheimer's disease. One day Howard's father was put on a cart and taken away and Howard never saw him again.
- DIY Dentistry: Once a year, Howard brought supplies to Gilbert, a filthy hermit who lived in the woods. One year Gilbert comes out of the forest and shows Howard his last remaining tooth, which is badly infected. Howard has to yank it out in a messy procedure that involves a lot of blood and Gilbert passing out.
- Dying Dream: Essentially everything in the book from George's POV, as he lays dying in his home, and memories of his past keep bubbling out of his subconscious.
- Flash Forward: While most of the book is a series of flashbacks, there are a couple of flash-forwards about George's wife Betsy. In one Betsy is described as tenderly caring for George's grave, and another mentions how years later she bought a retirement condo with the cash George got from clock mending, which he stashed away in deposit boxes.
- The Hermit: One part of the book has Howard remembering how once a year, while out on his rounds, he used to visit and sell supplies to an old hermit named Gilbert who lived somewhere in the woods. Eventually, one year Gilbert didn't show up for their rendezvous, and Howard reflected that there must be a pile of bones somewhere in the woods.
- History with Celebrity: Gilbert the hermit claims he went to school with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nobody believes this, because Gilbert is a filthy, smelly hermit, and because if that were true Gilbert would have to be very very old. But after Howard does some DIY Dentistry and yanks Gilbert's last tooth, he receives in the mail a pristine, signed and inscribed, first edition of The Scarlet Letter once given to Gilbert by Hawthorne.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: A variation on this trope as George approaches the point of death. The narration speaks of George's body as it shuts down as "he", but then decides to call George's body "it", or rather "the it formerly he." The idea is that George's soul or consciousness or whatever actually makes him George is going somewhere else and leaving his body behind.
- Job Title: Howard did this for a living. George was a teacher and guidance counselor but moonlighted as a clock repairman.
- Motor Mouth: Howard's second, bigamous wife Megan. Howard's POV notes that she talked "without pause from the moment she woke." That's followed by nearly a page of her non-stop nattering, without even the benefit of punctuation.
- Riddle for the Ages: Once when Howard was young, a man went insane with the cold, dark New England winter and set fire to his house. His neighbors found the bodies of the man and his wife and two children inside—except that not long after the man's wife and children, who had been off visiting her mother, returned to town. No one ever found out who the mysterious dead woman and children in the house were.
- Slice of Life: There is no story. There's just the dying dreams of an old man whose father left when he was a boy, interspersed with passages from the POV of the father and episodes from his life.
- Viking Funeral: Howard watches young George do this for a mouse, using a piece of bark as a funeral raft and soaking it with turpentine before setting it alight. Howard is reminded of the funerals of old Viking kings.
