Fiddle the Escape Wheel (Tinkers by Paul Harding)

Paul Harding is doing something here structurally that is just about impossible to explain. The long lyrical passages and excerpts from a fictional eighteenth-century horologists’ manual (seriously!) are forceful, beautiful, and—against all odds—deeply and convincingly rooted in the characters’ hearts and minds. This is a breathtaking book, Pulitzer notwithstanding.