There's much to love about "Tinkers," most of which has been noted and with which I agree. What struck me is how much Tinkers seems to be channeling Faulkner. The linguistic precision, yes of course. The sentence-paragraphs. The discursiveness. The mingling of poetic and quotidian. The well-crafted multiplicity of voices. The mysteries of the hermit, the farmer, the farm-wives caught in lightning. A never-mawkish compassion. But most of all, the way in which past, present, and future flow into each other. In Faulkner, the themes are the taking of the land, the enslavements, and the counterparts of the sociology of Yoknapawtapha County in the minds, lives, and deaths of the descendents---even including what can seem to be the obligatory idiot son. The land is New England, the inner landscape, then Faulkner's and now perhaps Harding's. If you like Tinkers and prefer, as I do, a book about the size of "War and Peace," try Faulkner too.