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Sign up todayTin Man
A Novel
Narrator
Sarah Winman
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Length
4 hours 33 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“This is a book that has solidified a place in my heart forever, and has marked a permanent place for Winman on my favorite authors list. Half told through Ellis' careful, delicate (one might even say "tinned") narrative, and half through Michael's hearty, full voice, this novel follows the beautiful, dynamic relationship between the two boys from their youth into adulthood, and the physical and psychological gravity they each have on the other. Expertly narrated by the novel's own Sarah Winman, this book is resonant and still shakes my heart to think about to this day. Don't be fooled by its brevity; it will leave you breathless.”
— Margy • Loganberry Books
Bookseller recommendation
“Saying I loved this book would almost feel like an understatement. The minute I started reading it I got pulled in and couldn't stop until I was done. With beautiful prose, Sarah Winman tells a warm and utterly heart-breaking story. Ellis and Michael are connected, seemingly by fate, at the moment in their lives when they both lose their mothers and need to feel connected to someone. And the connection they make is the one that lasts a lifetime, the one that gets them through, and can't be broken even with the years they spend apart not knowing what the other is doing. Told from both Elli's and Michael's perspective, Tin Man is a story of loss, pain, secrets and shattering loneliness. But above all it’s a story of love and friendship, the need we all feel, to be connected and to belong.”
— Marija D. • Politics & Prose
Bookseller recommendation
“Michael loves Ellis, Ellis loves Annie, and Annie loves them both. Yet Sarah Winman's blistering novel Tin Man is anything but the usual love triangle. Instead, Winman asks us to consider what remains of love after its object is gone. She crowds this spare little book, set in London, Oxford, and the south of France, with vivid portraits of loss and mourning. At once terse and expansive, Tin Man is a firework flashing in the night - gone too soon but burned forever into the reader's memory.”
— David Enyeart • Next Chapter Booksellers
Shortlisted for the 2017 Costa Novel Award
Finalist for the 2019 Indies Choice Book Award: Book of the Year
Longlisted for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Finalist for the 2019 Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction
From internationally bestselling author Sarah Winman comes an unforgettable and heartbreaking novel celebrating love in all its forms and the little moments that make up the life of an autoworker in a small working-class town.
This is almost a love story. But it's not as simple as that.
Ellis and Michael are twelve when they first become friends, and for a long time it is just the two of them, cycling the streets of Oxford, teaching themselves how to swim, discovering poetry, and dodging the fists of overbearing fathers. And then one day this closest of friendships grows into something more.
But then we fast-forward a decade or so, to find that Ellis is married to Annie, and Michael is nowhere in sight. Which leads to the question, what happened in the years between?
With beautiful prose and characters that are so real they jump off the page, Tin Man is a love letter to human kindness and friendship, and to loss and living.
Sarah Winman is the author of two previous novels, When God Was a Rabbit and A Year of Marvelous Ways. She grew up in Essex and now lives in London. She attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to act in theatre, film, and television.
Sarah Winman is the author of two previous novels, When God Was a Rabbit and A Year of Marvelous Ways. She grew up in Essex and now lives in London. She attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to act in theatre, film, and television.
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Reviews
Praise for Tin ManOne of Bustle's Best Fiction Books of 2018
A Finalist for the Indies Choice Award
A Finalist for the Ferro-Grumly Award for LGBTQ Fiction
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award
“Winman has crafted something of a small miracle here....The slow build of emotion and the cascade of quiet, well-earned tears are testament to how rich this meditation on love, art, loss and redemption truly is.”—The New York Times Book Review
“The most therapeutic emotional journey of the year.”—EW.com
“Half love story and half identity quest, Sarah Winman's Tin Man is 100 percent beautiful. It's the perfect book to completely drag you out of your own personal reality and into someone else's for a little while, and you'll find yourself reading it again and again.”—PopSugar
“A love story that will break your heart....You'll devour all 213 pages of Tin Man in one sitting, then wish for 213 more.”—HelloGiggles
“Plan to read it twice: first for the story, then to savor the beauty of the poetic symbolism threaded throughout the sparsely crafted prose.”—Shelf Awareness
“Laced with tenderness and kindness, Winman's latest novel is the story of three people and their lives of love, beauty and roads untaken....Rich in emotion and proves that great things do come in small packages.”—BookPage
“Affecting...[A] universalized fable of love and loss.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Complex characterization and emotional astonishments... These are real people, in all their anxieties and quirks, their good intentions and their unfortunate choices, just as we all are. And all this is an impressive accomplisment, even for a novelist who already seemed to know the truth about humanity by heart and could spill it onto the page with ease.”—The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“A spare, physically small novel that feels epic... The book is filled, like brush strokes on canvas, with the quiet moments of kindness and true friendship that make up a life.”—Winnipeg Free Press
“[An] achingly beautiful novel about love and friendship...Without sentimentality or melodrama, Winman stirringly depicts how people either interfere with or allow themselves and others to follow their hearts.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Strong characters, settings, and ambiance mark Winman's unique and uniquely affecting story of love's varieties, phases, and ability to bend time.”—Booklist
“This is an astoundingly beautiful book. It drips with tenderness. It breaks your heart and warms it all at once.”—Matt Haig, author of How to Stop Time
“Each spare sentence as delicate as a brushstroke; combined they paint a vibrant, emotional work that will leave you enthralled. I was deeply moved.”—Steven Rowley, author of Lily and the Octopus
“A beautiful book—pared back and unsentimental, assured, full of warmth, and told with a kind of tenderness that makes you ache.”—Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
“Heart-breaking and heart-making.”—Ali Land, author of Good Me, Bad Me
“It's exquisite. There are stories you just feel privileged to read. Sarah's writing breaks you and heals you, all in the same moment, and I haven't been so moved, and so in love with a book and its characters in a very long time.”—Joanna Cannon, author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep
“Tin Man is Winman's best novel yet. The playful subversiveness still bubbles away but there's a new candor there, an acceptance of needs and flaws that proves deeply touching. This is storytelling as cruelly kind as fate itself.”—Patrick Gale, author of A Place Called Winter Expand reviews
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