-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
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 one man.
This is almost a love story. But it's not as simple as that.
Ellis and Michael are twelve-year-old boys 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.
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award
"Starred Review. [An] achingly beautiful novel about love and friendship... Without sentimentality or melodrama, Winman stirringly depecits how people either interfere with or allow themselves and others to follow their hearts." - Publishers Weekly
"Strong characters, settings, and ambiance mark Winman's unique and uniquely affecting story of love's varieties, phases, and ability to bend time." - Booklist
"Though it has its affecting moments, the book tries too hard to be searing and soulful." - Kirkus
"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
"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
This information about Tin Man was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Winman is the author of two 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.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
