This Pulitzer Prize winning book is astounding and dense — and it is only 192 pages. It’s very hard to put down once you start it.
The story is told in the voices of three generations of a dysfunctional family. The old man is on his deathbed, in the dining room of his home, and the book covers his last eight days of life. He hallucinates, recalls and reflects on his life.
You flip from him growing up in Maine and then Massachusetts, and becoming a horologist (someone who makes clocks and watches). Then you learn about his father — a tinker with epilepsy — and his mother, who is contrary & cantankerous. My favorite line of hers is, “Don’t you try to make me feel better!”
The whole story is like the winding down of a clock, which is ironic since clocks were this man’s life.
You can almost feel every single thing that the author describes because the scenes are so vivid.
A spectacular first book for Mr. Harding.
This post originally appeared on my former blog, StyleSubstanceSoul.
Leave a Reply