'I said that Ellis and I talked of things in the moment. I said we just existed in each other’s presence, because that’s how it felt. Often in silence. And to a child it was good silence, because nothing felt misconstrued. There was a safety to our friendship, I said. We just fit, I remember saying.'

This is such a beautiful tender story about love, denial, obstacles and the interference of life itself. Ellis and Michael first became friends when they were twelve-year-old boys. What first love is more powerful than that of intense friendship? What is more sacred than finding a kindred of your own choosing? Boys too tender for their bruising fathers, for Michael it is evident he is the wrong sort of boy to his father’s thinking later in the novel when he recalls a memory of his yearning for the mother who left him, and how his father reacts to finding him cozying up to the things she left behind. Such boys were abhorrent to fathers. When Michael’s father dies, he comes to Oxford to live with his grandmother Mabel, with a suitcase full of books, fancying himself a poet he meets Ellis for the first time. A budding artist, whose father has other plans for his son’s future, Ellis shares his inner most being with Michael. Dora, Ellis’s mother, is quick to form a bond with Michael, who so badly needs to fill the space his mother left. When she becomes ill, the boys oversee her remaining days, and both make a promise about Ellis and his future, one that his father is hellbent on destroying.

Caught in intimacy while mourning the loss of his mother, Ellis’s father forces him into leaving school and taking up factory work. Without his loving mother there to defend her fragile son, to make sure he stays in school, he succumbs to defeat and his father’s bullying. Michael is always at his side, the two take a trip to France, steal time for a while and make memories that equally warm and torment them for life. I kept thinking of a famous quote by John Greenleaf Whittier, “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, “It might have been”. Many things might have been, and the things that happened were on borrowed time.

One moment the young men are in a sort of paradise, as close to one another as their own skin just the two of them, but then there is three when Annie enters the scene. Annie marries Ellis, but for a time they are a party of three. Nothing gets past Annie, and you can’t help but see why Ellis loved her and Michael too. Her love and sense of self was strong enough to give Ellis his private, quiet stolen moments with his best friend Michael. This is a book of hearts running over with love and compassion, while also containing the brutality of others who refuse to accept and love people for who and what they are. It stays with you after you put the book down. Both are lost in reverie throughout the years, questioning and doubting each other- loneliness a constant companion. Michael builds a life of his own, disappears from Ellis but as the story unfolds we know why. He kept a devastating secret too.

Though there is grief, there is beauty and love shining through the darkness. Loneliness can’t be escaped, and from the very beginning Winman guts you in the small quiet rebellion of Ellis’s mother and the painting she wins in a raffle, not just that she chose the prize despite her husbands wants, but the strength it gave her. It comes to mean so much, that painting. It’s a quiet novel, and the big moments all fester in the heart of the things we are denied. There is loss, but there will always be loss when love is factored in. As much as I adored Ellis and Michael, my breath catches for Annie, a truly beautiful soul.

No one guts me quite like Sarah Winman, When God Was A Rabbit broke my heart and I read it back in 2011, I never wrote a review, must remedy that. Not surprised to feel broken again.

Publication Date: May 15, 2018

Penguin Group Putnam

Tin Man is a beautiful, deeply moving novel that packs a punch that I never saw coming. This broke my heart for the second time this year. I put it down drained and devastated, but impressed that such a simple story was able to get under my skin.

I do have to say that one thing that caught me off guard was the lack of speech quotations. It did take me a a couple if pages to catch on.

I feel honored to have been able to read something so moving. See full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2366772332

This is a beautiful book.

I'm not even sure what else to say about it that would do it justice.

It's short - I have been reading slowly lately, and I finished it in just over a day. But it packs a powerful punch.

I don't even know how to describe what it is about other than people. Life. The strange ways in which our lives are shaped and the things that happen to us shape us.

It's beautiful and true and wonderful.

In the spirit of Kent Haruf and Leif Enger, Sarah Winman has written a book and the ways we are connected and the depth and breadth of the spaces between us. Tin Man is the story of three lovers: Micheal, Annie, and Ellis. Micheal and Ellis have a passionate but complicated past, Annie and Ellis have a passionate but complicated future, and in between them lies all of their loss, experiences, hopes, and eventually, despair and death.

After a tragic accident, Ellis is left alone. Through his memories and experiences, we explore the terrain of grief and love, what makes us human and the ways we dehumanize even ourselves. This isn't a book about doing as much as it is a book about being. Who are we? How do we fit? How do we love? And where do we go when the world finds our truest self-expression to be shameful and even repulsive?

This is my first book by Sarah Winman, and I loved her spare, precise writing style. Her unique tone made everything feel hazy and either the joyful gold of sunflowers or the foggy grey of London, as memories so often seem to be. Tin Man is a book for those who enjoy exploring the inner life and how we relate to the world and the people around us. In this, I found it deeply satisfying even though the lives of the characters it portrays are sometimes bleak and disconnected.

3.5 stars rounded up! This is the story of Ellis & Michael- from childhood on. Not really sure how to describe it... The story is short but the words are rich and deep! It seemed to skip around a lot- leaving chunks of time out, making you wonder or imply what happens. I am not sure that I am the right audience for this book, but can definitely see the beauty in it! Thanks to the publisher for this ARC.

You CAN have more than one great love in your life.

This book was by turns happy, sad, tragic, joyful. The different perspectives of events from Ellis and Michael as they grow up offer so much depth to this beautiful story. I felt like I was growing and healing right along with them. My heart feels so full after finishing.

I wanted to love this so much - and I did, in a way. The story is so sad to me. Wishing we knew now what we knew then, and how far we still have to go. This is like a love triangle that works, but it doesn't. And I can't help but think how often unsaid things, create such chasms between friends, and lovers. So unnecessary, and so sad.

Ellis, Annie and Michael have such an exquisite love story - and so many unanswered questions between them. This story is short, but powerful, and a lot of those questions are answered as we go through it. Sadly, there is so much love, but also so much loss. It's heartbreaking what they all endure.

I loved getting into Dora's story in the beginning - she was such an interesting character - but after that I struggled to get into it - finally really feeling like I was engaged in the story mid-way with Michael. But I coulnd't follow the writing style very well.... like they were these snippets of thoughts, run of mouth words, memories, flashes... I had trouble connecting the timelines and often found myself re-reading to stay engaged.

I love the descriptiveness of surroundings, and feelings, and characters (the sunflowers a character alone! and there was a lot of swimming.... I wonder what that signifies?), and the ending was so beautifully poetic. I just really wanted more story, more things happening.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

"There's something about first love, isn't there? It's untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it's the measure of all that follows." This is a beautifully written book about friendship, love, longing, loneliness and Van Gogh's sunflowers. Ellis and Michael meet in Oxford when they are 12 and Michael comes to live with his grandmother Mabel. The two boys become inseparable friends and eventual sexual partners. When Ellis later marries Annie, the three of them maintain a close and loving friendship even though Michael moves to London. However, after Mabel dies Michael no longer visits Oxford and during the first half of this book we are left to wonder what happened to him. We find out in the second half of the book.

This was a very touching story and parts of it were unbearably sad. Sometimes it was a little challenging to read because it shifted back and forth in time and from place to place. There are also no real chapter breaks and no quotation marks around the dialogue. Nevertheless I'd be happy to read more by this author.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This wasn't a good fit for me. I am not publishing a review on this one.

Michael and Ellis became best friends when they were 12. A relationship borne out of tragedy that spurned a beautiful love story...ish. Half of the story follows Ellis from the time he met Michael until adulthood as a widow from his wife Annie. While the other half is from Michael's diary.

I didn't originally plan to pick up Tin Man because it's not a genre I typically go for (contemporary, adult fiction), but it has quickly become one of my favorite reads of 2018 so far. Both endearing and heartbreaking, Tin Man is everything that I didn't realize I needed in a book. The characters are written beautifully and the relationships are complex and tragic but still believable. I found myself rooting for so many different storylines and in the end I think I would have been happy with anything the author decided to do. I highly recommend everyone pick this one up.

The entire book was melancholy and bittersweet. It was definitely full of love, but at times it felt a little too overdone.

What a wonderful story of love, life and friendship. Ellis and Michael find each other when they are twelve and their friendship grows and becomes their solace. The story fast forwards 10 years. Ellis is married to Annie and Michael is nowhere to be seen. This book is the story of unconditional love and friendship between three young people. The writing is beautiful and the story is meaningful. A must read

A beautiful and bittersweet story of love, understanding, grief, and so much more. I've heard quite a few people talk about this, so I was looking forward to reading it, and it did not disappoint. The writing style is unique and not what I am used to, but it added to the story even if at times it was distracting.

I believe there are some books that find you at exactly the right time and this was absolutely one of them for me. I needed something hopeful and with a look at the power and strength of love, and this was it; an exploration of love (in all its forms) and the effects it has on our lives.

The language was beautiful. It wasn’t overly descriptive, but it was precise. While that makes it sound mechanical and flat, it actually served to bring out the emotions of the words so much stronger.

I am usually not a fan of plots that jump all over in the timeline, but here it works so well. It felt so realistic that a view, or smell, or sound would bring back a memory of an earlier time. It made sense for a non-linear storyline, and I’m not sure the book would have been as powerful for me without it.

I almost gave this 4 stars, but realized I am already excited to reread this when the same mood strikes again, which is an automatic 5 star rating from me.

"And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth."

This book unexpectedly broke my heart.

Ellis and Michael first met when they were twelve, and they became fast friends. But somewhere in between, as they spent their time cycling and swimming and being boys, their friendship evolved into something more. Later in life, though, Ellis married Annie and Michael was not around, leading to the question: what happened in between?

Tin Man reminded me a lot of The Heart's Invisible Furies . Although Tin Man felt a little tamer in terms of plot, that doesn’t mean it packed any less of an emotional punch. It’s shorter, yes – 224 pages to a whopping 582 pages for The Heart’s Invisible Furies - but it was similarly potent, albeit in a smaller package.

This was a character-driven rather than a plot-driven novel and so is mostly told through flashbacks of our main characters, Ellis and Michael. Through these alternating viewpoints, the author slowly peels back the layers to reveal the lives of these two men: their dreams, their regret, their grief, and their ultimate hope.

I really liked how every piece of this story fit together. Because it was short, everything written was significant. Although a tad overt in terms of symbolism, even the seasons lent themselves to setting the scene. When Tin Man opens, it is winter, and Ellis is a shell of who he was, but as the story progresses – and Ellis reveals more about his past – so too does his growth and spirit as winter melts into spring. Michael, too, underwent a similar transition during his narrative. It was overt if you were looking for it, subtle if you weren’t, but it added an extra layer of atmosphere and depth to the story that helped the reader to better understand the characters.

Although there were things I didn’t like about Tin Man - namely, the stylistic choice of the author to ignore quotation marks – I really enjoyed it. It was sweet and sad and utterly heartbreaking: the characters sucked you into their story and didn’t let you go.

"Everything was real not perfect. And yet that’s what made it so perfect."

Thank you to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam (G.P. Putnam's Sons) for an advanced copy of this eBook in exchange for an honest review.

Tin Man has been super hyped online and I had really high expectations. While I was left wanting a bit more, there was a lot to enjoy. Tin Man follows three characters and an unforgettable love story. Very tender and sweet.

My Review of “Tin Man” by Sarah Winman

“Tin Man” by Sarah Winman is beautifully written with vivid colorful descriptions of flowers, and landscape. At the same time it is a heartbreaking and emotional story about loneliness, friendship, and memories. The author expresses the feelings of love and loss through art, poetry and literature.

The Author compares and contrasts the differences of kindness and being mean, of acceptance and denial, and loss and living. The Author describes her characters as complex and complicated as depicted by the events and times.

Ellis and Michael become the best of friends when they are twelve. Both boys have been brought up in dysfunctional families. Ellis’s Mom was described as a compassionate and caring woman. The boys ride their bicycles and explore what life has to offer. Ellis marries Annie, and for a while the three of them are always together. Then Michael disappears.

What has happened to Michael? Why is Ellis so alone? This is thought provoking and sad story. I would recommend this for those readers that enjoy a descriptive and well written story. I received an ARC from NetGalley for my honest review.

This is a beautiful tale about first love, friendship, and the ebbs and flows of life. This book packs a lot into its 224 pages and details the instant and deep friendship between Ellis and Michael. This is not a linear story, and there are differing perspectives.

There are not any quotation marks for dialog, which in combination with the stream of consciousness style of writing may not be for every reader. But it works so well with this story. The prose shifts ever so slightly depending on the point of view and time period: the present is almost choppy and disjointed, while the past is more flowing and flowery prose (barring when Ellis' father is present). The monotonous and minutiae of life are highlighted in almost every line; little things at the time hold more meaning later when we recollect them.

I am so glad that I stuck with this book. I will admit that I was frustrated and confused the first 12% of the book, but it slowly won me over. By the time I neared the end of Michael's narrative, I saw the beauty that Winman crafted. While we experience life in a linear fashion, we also experience life somewhat in reverse through recollection and relationships gain new meaning with additional information. This is a unique and refreshing read.

This is a poetic and sensitive piece of work, a tribute to love and survival, and art and desire. But it also feels as if it really doesn’t escape the bonds of its subject matter - AIDS, gay love, following one’s heart. There’s a strong streak of romanticism to the three central characters, and several (usually female) ancillary ones too. These people seem very sweet, very bohemian, very lovely. Tragedies befall them but they keep shining through. Thus, while the sentiments are affecting, the characterization is scarcely plausible.
I enjoyed entering this attractive, bittersweet world, evoked in lovely prose, but I didn’t believe a word of it.