George Crosby, a retired clock-mender in the backwoods of New England, is counting down his last remaining seconds. As his organs progressively shut down he recalls his father, a tinker who suffered from seizures, and his grandfather, an amiable parson whose nonsensical sermons indicated undiagnosed dementia. Harding's debut novel won a Pulitzer prize  whether you concur with the judges' decision depends on your tolerance for outbreaks of whimsical onomatopoeia ("The tinkle of tin sibilant, tiny beneath the lid of the boreal forest") interspersed with dry inclusions from an 18th-century horological primer: "The escapement on a clock consists of a collar on a pinion, called a pallet." The slow-burning account of three generations laid waste by hereditary mental disease is not leavened by much in the way of humour, though there is an eye-watering description of the need to hang on to one's hat when driving a flatulent mule: "The beast had eaten it off his head once before, leaving it ill and gassy and he behind it with teary eyes and a sunburned nose."