"Tin Man" by Sarah Winman (Tinder Press, 2017)

In 1950 an unhappy wife wins a painting in a raffle and defiantly hangs it on the wall.

In 1996, Oxford, we get Ellis's side of the story. He's 45, the son of the unhappy wife. Years ago his partner Annie and best friend Michael died in a car accident. Michael had AIDS and Ellis was at times his lover. When Ellis's mother died, his father's lover Carol moved in. Ellis retrieved the painting from their loft. He'd always wanted to be a painter but his father had stopped him. He finds in the loft some of Michael's stuff.

In November 1989 we get Michael's journals. Michael and Ellis began being physical at 15. When Michael's 39 he had a 26 year-old lover, G, who dies from AIDS. He tells G about cicadas. "it's only during the last three weeks of their live that they live above ground and the males call out their song. And sometimes it's for mating and sometimes protest ... We all had to come out of the dark to sing". After 6 years away from Oxford, he returns.

Then back to Ellis's PoV, June 1996, France.

Some interesting observations about threesome friendship and grief, but in the end, falls short for me.

Other reviews

• Hannah Beckerman (The transformative power of art and the untapped potential in quotidian lives are themes that pervade Tin Man.)
• Good reads
• Lucy Christopher (At only 200 pages, it still reads like an epic. However, to this reader, when it finishes, it felt like Tin Man should only have just begun. Obviously threads left unanswered and mysteries remaining is common and indeed often desirable in literature, but Tin Man feels unfinished. Those beautiful scenes, painted in unsparing language, somehow require a little more depth.)
• kirkusreviews (the chatter about painting and art is mostly banal. So too the descriptions of the natural world, with abundant references to snow in the first part of the novel and cicadas in the second. Though it has its affecting moments, the book tries too hard to be searing and soulful.)