BOOK CLUB KIT
1 Tin Man is narrated by both Michael and Ellis, each in a different section. What was this reading experience like? Whose story is this?
2 The female characters in the novel are pivotal in Michael’s and Ellis’s lives—we see this through Dora and her kindness to Michael, Mabel taking in Ellis, and then Annie taking on Michael as almost an integral part of her relationship with Ellis. In what ways do these three women underpin Michael’s and Ellis’s lives, and their relationship?
3 What do you think the title, Tin Man, refers to? Discuss its possible meanings.
4 Discuss the use of the color yellow throughout the story, taking a close look at the van Gogh painting that features in the book.
5 How is Michael and Ellis’s relationship affected by the time and place they live in? Consider their childhood in Oxford, their summer in France, and their adult lives after Michael returns.
6 Discuss the different ways that grief and mourning are portrayed in Tin Man. Think about the reactions of Ellis, his father, and Michael after losing someone they love.
7 Ellis and Michael each describe their summer together in France in 1969. Discuss this pivotal time period and its impact on the characters, as well as your experience reading about it from two different points of view.
8 How does Annie connect with both Ellis and Michael? How did you see her role in the trio?
9 What do you imagine happens to Ellis after the close of the book? What kind of life do you hope he lives?
10 Do you think Tin Man is ultimately a sad story? A hopeful one? How did you feel after reaching the end of the novel?
© Patricia Niven
A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I TH S A R A H W I N M A N Tell us about the title, which carries echoes of The Wizard of Oz. This was one of the questions I needed to explore at the start of the book—whether there would be a connection with the film, and how that might look. The interesting thing for me was the idea of the yellow brick road. The idea of journeying toward truth, self-realization, integration. And, of course, the color yellow, which would contrast well against the gray of the industrial landscape at the beginning. Following the sun, maybe? I knew about Arles in the South of France because I’d been there many times to a photographic festival, and was therefore aware of van Gogh’s connection to it. But it was only when I read the book Dear Theo—a compilation of his letters to his brother—that I took an avid interest in his art. I came to the painter through his writing. He writes beautifully about loss and
longing and love and creativity. But it was his desire to travel to the South of France that caught my imagination. He believed that seeking the light and color of the South would make him a better artist. He was also waiting for the artist Paul Gauguin to join him and was very excited about this collaboration. He wanted to set up an artist studio, and he writes about this desire and about the many versions of the Sunflowers he was painting as decoration for Gauguin’s room. Dora’s idea of men and boys being capable of beautiful things came from this image. Sunflowers became the motif of hope, of acceptance, of journeying, of possibility. And, of course, the desire to follow the sun—paramount for Dora, Ellis, and Michael. Your previous novels were set in Cornwall, England, and have elements of magical realism, which was at least in part a function of the setting. Were you consciously trying to get away from these in your new book? No, not at all. The elements of magical realism in both When God Was a Rabbit and A Year of Marvellous Ways were there to highlight the fractured lives of both Elly and Marvellous. The rabbit talked because Elly needed the rabbit to talk. Likewise, Elly needed to believe that Jenny Penny could perform something magical, could be someone magical. It gave meaning to her life, and protected her—momentarily—from the abuse she had experienced. Marvellous created a magical world because the life she had lived had been shrouded in poverty and bigotry and hardship. But she created this incredible life of triumph fueled by love. The magical realism were simple acts of imagination by characters unwilling to define themselves by their circumstance. Ellis in Tin Man is also suffering. He has been shut down by grief and loss. But he doesn’t have the imagination, yet, to see beyond the life he’s living. He has structure but no meaning. The sparseness of writing in the first half of the book is there to show the sparseness of his emotional life, and his incapacity to see beyond the literal. The women seem remarkably selfless: Dora with her kindness to Michael; Mabel, taking in Ellis; and then Annie, taking on Michael as almost an integral part of her relationship with Ellis. Were you conscious at the outset of how these three women would underpin Michael and Ellis’s lives, and their relationship? The women were always going to be the bedrock of this book. Annie, for me, is the most important character. She is the hinge. She gives Michael and Ellis some of their happiest moments. Without her, I don’t think they’d exist in an adult friendship. She makes them a family. As for Dora and Mabel, they allowed the boys to be who they were without inflicting the burden of how boys and young men should be. They gave them space to become who they were. They championed them and watched over them. How far was Ellis and Michael’s relationship a victim of its time? I’m loath to describe their relationship in this way, because Ellis’s shame predates his burgeoning sexuality. His shame is, in part, linked to his relationship with his father, and the violence that has always been present, and the feelings of never being good enough. Without the championing of his mother, he would always be adrift to some degree, seeking approval and encouragement from a man who could never give it. This is also a familiar story of today. However, until 1967 homosexuality was a criminal offense and even when it became partially decriminalized in England and Wales, the age of consent was set at twenty-one so both
Michael and Ellis would have been aware that they were under age. But it wasn’t the fear of being found out that stopped them from being together. Michael tells Annie he had “no room to love anyone else.” Did the fact that it was secret add to this particular experience of first love’s intensity? When Michael says this, he is, in fact, referring to both Annie and Ellis. He loves them both, albeit in different ways. They exist as a three and Michael can’t imagine bringing anyone new into this space. For him it was all or nothing. Only by walking away would he have room to explore a new relationship with a man. But as we learn, no one could ever match the intensity of that first moment. And I don’t think he really wanted anyone to. Parts of the story are set in the late 1980s in a community devastated by the newly identified AIDS. You write very movingly of the ravages of the illness. How did you set about researching this very sensitive topic? The 1980s was a time of great sadness and anger; a time of irrefutable tenderness as men cared for men. But always there was dancing and hope. It was a decade of bigotry, of divisive politics, similar to today. Two books I found particularly influential were: Colm Tóibín’s The Blackwater Lightship and Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir. Also, my good friend Pam Hibbs set up the AIDS ward at St Barts hospital in London in the late 1980s. One afternoon she quietly told me about her experiences. Ellis and Michael are each allowed to tell their story in their own words and both are presented with great compassion and understanding. Especially in what was a pivotal scene in France in the summer of 1969, did you find yourself siding more with one of them? I did, at first. Early drafts had me siding with Michael, had me writing arguments between the two of them, including a sudden return to Oxford. Most of the time the focus was on sexuality, but as the story became clear, that was not the wound. I needed to remove blame. Remove anger. Remove Michael from the room in France. Only when Ellis is alone does the fear of his father return. It is a fear that extinguishes all he is, and it affirms the belief that he is unworthy of happiness and incapable of making a success of his life. This shame precedes the shame of sexuality. What were the challenges of writing from more than one perspective? As both perspectives were male, I was focused on making the voices contrasting and believable. I wanted readers to have a clear sense of their personalities and emotional states. It is hard to overestimate the impact van Gogh’s painting Sunflowers has on Dora Judd. Have you felt similarly about a particular painting or work of art? Not as singularly as Dora. I have felt great emotion standing in front of original works of art that I had only previously seen in books or magazines. For instance—Tintoretto’s work in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, Munch’s The Scream, Hockney’s A Bigger Splash. Now I wish to go back to Amsterdam to the Van Gogh Museum and see his works with greater understanding. This interview by Frances Gertler originally appeared on foyles.co.uk.
Q U OT ES O N LO V E A N D F R I E N D S H I P FROM TIN MAN
“You have a nice laugh, you said. And then we didn’t speak. Do you remember? Do you remember how you stared at me? How unnerved you made me feel? And I asked you why you were staring at me. And you said, I’m wondering if I should take a chance on you. And I said, Yes. Yes, is the only answer.”
“What’s a complement? Ellis asked. Complementing colors are ones that make the other stand out. Like blue and orange, said his mother, as if reciting off the page. Like me and Ellis, said Michael. Yes, she smiled. Like you two.”
“From the moment I saw him, I wanted to kiss him. That’s my wellpracticed and preferred introduction to a conversation about Ellis. I used to wonder if my desire for him came out of displacement. My need to join with someone, my readiness to love. The consequence of grieving, even for a father who was, by then, as distant to me as the southern sky.”
“There’s something about first love, isn’t there? she said. It’s untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it’s the measure of all that follows, she said.”
“I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible.”
“Are they ready for you, Michael? For my recital? No, she said. Are they ready for you? Is the world ready for you?”
“I’d never felt more myself. Or more in tune to what I was and what I was capable of. A moment of authenticity when fate and blueprint collide and everything is not only possible, but within arm’s reach. And I fell in love. Madly, intoxicatingly so. I think he may have, too. Just for a moment. But I never really knew.”