I am never again going to feel guilty about picking up a little book – if Tinkers is anything to go by, it’s the little ones that take the longest. Not a bad thing when one is enjoying it. Unfortunately, my head just wasn’t in the right space for this one. As I daydreamed about shopping lists, what I was going to cook for dinner and who I must remember to email, several pages had been turned and I hadn’t taken a word in.
Just as one can be in the right place at the wrong time, I guess the same can be said about the right book being read at the wrong time. But it’s happened to me before. I remember picking up a Philippa Gregory book, recommended by a friend of mine – and her mother – who both thoroughly enjoyed it. No matter how many times I picked it up and put it down, I couldn’t get into it. Almost ten years later and I couldn’t put it down, reading it from cover to cover in an afternoon!
In between my daydreams, I realised Tinkers was quite a lovely story – sad, but beautiful. As a man lies dying with friends and family around him, and the tick tock of clocks he’s repaired over the years, he hallucinates and experiences memories of his father’s childhood, centred around the dark world of epilepsy. It provided an interesting insight into this condition, and the “madness” so many families tried to keep hidden.
Tinkers will definitely go on my bookshelf, to be read again in years to come, and truly appreciated for what it’s worth. For now though, it's on husband's bedside table to see if he can make more sense of it!
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