A review by stevienlcf
Enon by Paul Harding

3.0

In "Enon," Paul Harding revisits some of the characters from his Pulitzer prize-winning "Tinkers." In this novel, Charlie Crosby, the grandson of the titular clock tinkerer from the earlier book, slowly self-destructs when his beloved only child, 13-year-old Kate, is struck and killed while riding her bicycle in the bucolic New England town of Enon, Massachussets. After Kate's funeral, Charlie punches a hole in the wall of his home, shattering his hand so "I couldn't work or do much of anything that needed doing." Charlie's wife, Susan, a "mystery that remained that way for the duration of [their] marriage," joins her family in Minnesota never to be heard from (nor thought of) again: "I kissed her again and she got into the car and the car pulled out of the driveway and drove off and that was the last time I saw her." Charlie is left to self-medicate with painkillers and whiskey, as he ruminates about the activities that he had shared with Kate -- feeding the birds, practicing running, and playing cribbage. As Charlie descends into unwashed and drug-addled madness, his visions become more unhinged. Although Harding's work is filled with gorgeous, hallucinatory writing, it is a brutal read to watch this haunted, broken protagonist suffer alone with his unfathonable grief.