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resareads's review against another edition
3.0
Dealing with grief is a difficult task, near impossible for some. For parents who have lost their child that task is even more than impossible. Harding has giving us a disturbing insight into the devastating process through his unnamed narrator in this emotional, but slow moving tale told from the perspective of a grieving father.
“Even if at any given moment it was no more than the hope for the return of hope, a single grain of it still contradicts a universe of despair.”
It’s hard to believe these words come out of the mouth of Harding’s narrator as you start the book. Distraught by the death of his daughter when she is hit by a car while riding her bike our narrator loses himself in his grief. Where his wife turns to her family for support and forces herself to continue living, the narrator turns to anger, drugs, and the dreams his near over-doses induce to stay connected with his daughter Kate.
This is not a “feel-good” or “how to move on” type book. It is real, raw, and sometimes uncomfortable. Our narrator is not a likable character. The further into the book you read the more difficult it is to empathize with him, and yet to not like him makes you feel guilty. His daughter just died. And now you know how it feels to be the people surrounding him during the grieving process. While not all parents become unable to live in the same way our narrator does after the death of Kate, his grieving process feels authentic because it feels individual. No one would grieve for Kate the same way as her father, and the more dependent on drugs he gets the more bizarre ways he pays tribute to his daughter become.
“I pushed deeper into the shade, further toward the border between this life and what lies outside it, and became something closer and closer to a corpse myself My hair was thin, my bones stuck out, and my skin stretched across my skull. I needed to be careful and not step over the boundary, because the thought that her own death caused her father’s suicide would be too awful for my daughter to bear.”
Harding takes us down into the narrator’s depression in a powerful way, and, honestly, sometimes it’s difficult to stay there. Harding has proven his merit as an author with his skill as a writer to capture the emotions of a real, human, person and at times the narration feels so personal it feels intrusive to be a part of it. There are chapters of the book that are hard to get through. The story stops dead any time we’re transported back into a memory of our narrator’s childhood and while it breaks up the disturbing, drug-addled, grief-ridden narration of the present the sudden, jerking stops in narration were hard to plow through.
“Houses retain traces of the people who have lived in them and I feel those traces immediately whenever I step into one”
Just like houses, traces of this book will remain with you even after you’ve finished the book. While not a plot driven novel, the literary merit of Harding’s style and the authentic way he conveys difficult emotions make this book a necessary edition to the literary works of the year.
I received an ARC of this book from the publisher.
appletonkelli's review against another edition
4.0
This, my first book of 2014, is a heartbreaking tale of unthinkable loss. The loss of Charlie's daughter leads to the loss of Charlie's marriage and the loss of Charlie himself. His downward spiral into grief, pain, drugs and alcohol is so clearly illustrated that the reader feels as if the wretched journey is shared.
ekoreads's review against another edition
2.0
A story about a New England man’s decent into grief after the tragic death of his daughter. While the story started out promising and was marked with Harding’s beautiful writing, I began to lose interest by the last quarter of the book. I loved Tinkers enough to set out to find whatever else Harding has written and I would definitely try another novel whenever he publishes again. This one just didn’t quite gel for me. 2.5*
firstimpressionsreviews's review against another edition
5.0
I read Tinkers several years ago and loved it. Paul Harding's story has beautiful prose and a fascinating storyline. Although, I believe my interest in the novel was due to the fact that its main character, George Crosby is epileptic, a subject that I am interested in.
Enon is elegantly written and reread sentences due to their excellence. This would be an opportune moment to quote such passages as one does Shakespeare; although there are far too many and would face carpel tunnel if I were to do so.
As epilepsy takes such a major role in Tinkers I expected the disorder to be spotlighted in Enon as well only for it to be the contrary. In hindsight, I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was knowing that seizures are not genetic nor should a family be overshadowed or defined by a disability. Everyone has their own story to tell and Enon is Charlie Crosby's
Enon is a continuation of sorts, sloping down the Crosby family tree to George's grandson Charlie. To connect these generations, the reader is given vivid memories of Charlie's daughter Kate and with his Grandfather George with these reminisces woven together seamlessly.
Paul Harding's book is one of grief, an emotion we can all relate to. Charlie bares the worst kind imaginable -- the loss of a child. Charlie's maddening decent through grief leads him to prescription drugs. Enon hit a low point for me (as it did for Charlie) when he visits his neighborhood drug dealer, it became too deep a hole for me bare and found it difficult to dig myself out. Although one cannot imagine how they would handle such a situation. Life is not an episode of Growing Pains whose problems can be solved in thirty minutes.
In the end, Enon is a novel of sadness, love and redemption and is beautiful to behold.
Enon is elegantly written and reread sentences due to their excellence. This would be an opportune moment to quote such passages as one does Shakespeare; although there are far too many and would face carpel tunnel if I were to do so.
As epilepsy takes such a major role in Tinkers I expected the disorder to be spotlighted in Enon as well only for it to be the contrary. In hindsight, I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was knowing that seizures are not genetic nor should a family be overshadowed or defined by a disability. Everyone has their own story to tell and Enon is Charlie Crosby's
Enon is a continuation of sorts, sloping down the Crosby family tree to George's grandson Charlie. To connect these generations, the reader is given vivid memories of Charlie's daughter Kate and with his Grandfather George with these reminisces woven together seamlessly.
Paul Harding's book is one of grief, an emotion we can all relate to. Charlie bares the worst kind imaginable -- the loss of a child. Charlie's maddening decent through grief leads him to prescription drugs. Enon hit a low point for me (as it did for Charlie) when he visits his neighborhood drug dealer, it became too deep a hole for me bare and found it difficult to dig myself out. Although one cannot imagine how they would handle such a situation. Life is not an episode of Growing Pains whose problems can be solved in thirty minutes.
In the end, Enon is a novel of sadness, love and redemption and is beautiful to behold.
tkevansen's review against another edition
2.0
This was depressing. Probably shouldn't have listened to it on the way to work. Like going to work wasn't depressing enough.