Tinkers (novel)

2009 novel by Paul Harding

Tinkers

First edition hardcover

Author| Paul Harding
Language| English
Genre| Novel
Publisher| Bellevue Literary Press

Publication date

| January 1, 2009
Publication place| United States
Media type| Print (hardcover), e-book
Pages| 191 pp.
ISBN| 978-1934137192 (hardcover)

Tinkers is a 2009 first novel by American author Paul Harding. The novel tells the stories of George Washington Crosby, an elderly clock repairman, and of his father, Howard. On his deathbed, George remembers his father, who was a tinker selling household goods from a donkey-drawn cart and who struggled with epilepsy.[1] The novel was published by Bellevue Literary Press, a sister organization of the Bellevue Literary Review.

Tinkers won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among other awards and honors.[2] The Pulitzer board called the novel "a powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality."[2]

## Plot

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Tinkers follows George Crosby in the days before he dies and his memories from his childhood. The book takes the reader through both George's life as well as his father's, Howard, who sells home goods from a wagon in New England. The reader learns about George's skill at fixing clocks, which becomes a metaphor for life's beauty as well as its fragility. It is about Howard's struggle with epilepsy as well as his own relationship with his father, who was a minister who fell ill when Howard was a boy. It is a novel that is not only about death, but the gift of simple pleasures of nature and being in the world. It is about fathers and sons, solitude and connection.

## Reviews

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The Los Angeles Times praised "a writer [who] describes something so well—snow, oranges, dirt—that you can smell it or feel it or sense it in the room."[3] The New Yorker enjoyed Harding's "skillful evocation [and] mosaic of memories".[4] The Boston Globe called the novel a "poignant exploration of where we may journey when the clock has barely a tick or two left and we really can't go anywhere at all."[5] The New York Times failed to review the novel before the Pulitzer Prize announcement, noting that it was the first novel since A Confederacy of Dunces in 1981 to come from a small publisher and win that award.[6]

## Awards and honors

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### Awards

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Year  | Award  | Category  | Result  | Ref.

|
|
|
|

2009 | Center for Fiction First Novel Prize | —  | Shortlisted  | [7]
Los Angeles Times Book Prize | First Fiction | Finalist  | [8]
2010 | PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize | —  | Won  | [9]
Pulitzer Prize | Fiction | Won  | [2]
2011 | International Dublin Literary Award | —  | Longlisted  | [10]

### Honors

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* 2010 Best Novels of 2009 by Publishers Weekly and Amazon.com[11]
* 2010 Best Books of 2009 by NPR and the Library Journal[11]

## Editions

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This literature-related list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (November 2023)

|

* Tinkers, New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2009. ISBN 9781934137192 (hardcover)
* Tinkers, New York: HarperCollins, 2009 (international edition). ISBN 9781554689866 (paperback)
* Tinkers, New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2019 (10th anniversary edition). ISBN 9781942658603 (paperback)

## Notes

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1. ^ Tinkers at Bellevue Literary Press
2. ^ a b c "2010 Pulitzer Prizes". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved May 13, 2025.
3. ^ Review by Susan Salter Reynolds in The Los Angeles Times, Dec 28, 2008.
4. ^ "Books Briefly Noted", The New Yorker, Jan 12, 2009
5. ^ Review by Chris Bohjalian in The Boston Globe, Feb 28, 2009
6. ^ "The One That Got Away", The New York Times Papercuts blog, April 12, 2010
7. ^ "2009 First Novel Prize". The Center for Fiction. Retrieved May 13, 2025.
8. ^ "Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2009 | Bookreporter.com". www.bookreporter.com. Retrieved May 13, 2025.
9. ^ kanopi_admin (November 16, 2012). "2010 PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowships for Writers". PEN America. Retrieved May 13, 2025.
10. ^ "Tinkers". Dublin Literary Award. September 7, 2024. Retrieved May 13, 2025.
11. ^ a b The Literary Horologist: Paul Harding “Tinkers” With Time, OpenLoopPress interview

## External links

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* "Word of mouth helped propel Mass. novelist to Pulitzer", By Geoff Edgers, The Boston Globe, April 15, 2010
* Photos of the first edition of Tinkers

* v
* t
* e

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Previously the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel from 1917–1947

1918–1925|

* His Family by Ernest Poole (1918)
* The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919)
* The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921)
* Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922)
* One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923)
* The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (1924)
* So Big by Edna Ferber (1925)

1926–1950|

* Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1926; declined)
* Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927)
* The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928)
* Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929)
* Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (1930)
* Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931)
* The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1932)
* The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling (1933)
* Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Pafford Miller (1934)
* Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935)
* Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936)
* Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1937)
* The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938)
* The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939)
* The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940)
* In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942)
* Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (1943)
* Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944)
* A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945)
* All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947)
* Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948)
* Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949)
* The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1950)

1951–1975|

* The Town by Conrad Richter (1951)
* The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952)
* The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953)
* A Fable by William Faulkner (1955)
* Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956)
* A Death in the Family by James Agee (1958)
* The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959)
* Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1960)
* To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961)
* The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962)
* The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963)
* The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965)
* The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter (1966)
* The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967)
* The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968)
* House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969)
* The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford (1970)
* Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972)
* The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973)
* No award given (1974)
* The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975)

1976–2000|

* Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976)
* No award given (1977)
* Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978)
* The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1979)
* The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1980)
* A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981)
* Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1982)
* The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983)
* Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984)
* Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985)
* Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986)
* A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987)
* Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988)
* Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989)
* The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (1990)
* Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (1991)
* A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992)
* A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993)
* The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994)
* The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995)
* Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996)
* Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997)
* American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998)
* The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999)
* Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)

2001–present|

* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001)
* Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002)
* Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003)
* The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004)
* Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2005)
* March by Geraldine Brooks (2006)
* The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007)
* The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2008)
* Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2009)
* Tinkers by Paul Harding (2010)
* A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)
* No award given (2012)
* The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (2013)
* The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2014)
* All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015)
* The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016)
* The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2017)
* Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2018)
* The Overstory by Richard Powers (2019)
* The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2020)
* The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2021)
* The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (2022)
* Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Trust by Hernan Diaz (2023)
* Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (2024)
* James by Percival Everett (2025)

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