Sometimes we need healing.
We talk about the healing of physical injuries, of taking time to rest up, to avoid possible infection.
I sit here, a rainy Wednesday night, a glass of red wine held in a hand that sports a magnificent red welt and an ever shrinking scab. The result of careless handling of a pan of hot water a week ago.
It sploshed. I swore.
In the week since, it has drawn concern, it has stopped more than one meeting at work as the injury becomes clear. It is obvious. And so is the advice dispensed from every would-be doctor.
We don’t talk about the healing of the soul, of the mind. Not really.
I only mention this, because today, I needed healing.
Not the scald on my hand, which will heal without my intervention. It may scar. It may not. To me, it’s sort of irrelevant. It’s skin. It’s part of me, but it’s not me.
Right now, I am emotionally, physically, mentally exhausted. It is my fault. I’ve not been looking after myself – I’m not only burning the candle at both ends, but I’m burning it in the middle as well.
I’ve been pushed and pushed myself too far, both in work and socially. All of this, for little old introverted me, is too much. The fear of letting anyone down, of making anyone’s life harder has all but crippled me.
So, today, through the post at work, I receive a copy of Tinman by Sarah Winman. I’m excited. I’ve been dying to read it since learning of it’s existence back in early January. Five weeks or so ago, but it feels like an age.
Winman herself told me of the premise, and I wanted it there and then. Opening that package today, I realised it was exactly what I needed. A treat. Something I had been looking forward to. I could sit with this book, something I knew I would enjoy and just shut out my world, my life, and take refuge in someone else’s a for a short while.
Taking some time for me. That sounds quite trite, quite… 90’s American self-help (“remember, you’re you”), but sometimes we need that.
Tinman is the story of love. Of first love, and loss. The story of Michael, Annie and Ellis. It is the story of healing.
At a little under two hundred pages, it is but a snapshot into their lives. We stand on their doormat and glimpse in at their home, we don’t see everything, but gosh does that glimpse make us feel we know them.
By page thirty four, I was Instagramming a line from the book (the modern equivalent of underlining, of highlighting):
He staggered up and felt so much space around him he almost choked
By page forty eight, I was on the edge of tears. In fact, Winman took me to the emotional edge, and left me there for the rest of the book.
That’s a hell of a talent to have you feeling those things by that point. Most books haven’t even got started by then. For comparison’s sake, at page forty eight Arthur Dent has only just made it into space (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and Harry Potter has only just learnt he is a wizard (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone). The latter, a famous plot point in a short book, that somehow manages to pack a lot in.
And there’s Sarah Winman, making me cry. Like I’ve known these characters for years. I don’t want to say too much… In short, early on, Annie sends Ellis off to find ‘him’.
You think you know who ‘him’ is, but then things start to become unclear. Maybe it’s Michael, maybe it’s someone else. I’m left with a feeling that it might be his own self that Ellis is looking for.
Tinman is simply a beautiful book, writing that draws you in. Short elegant sentences that are more than the sum of their parts.
I want company, I don’t want company.
It is desperately sad, each of the three characters representing a different kind of heartache. You wish things were different, you’re sort of glad they’re not…
Sometimes we all need healing. My hand. Ellis’ heart. Your stress.
That might take the form of a bandage for your hand, closure for your broken heart, or something to help you switch off and mentally de-clutter.
For the first two, I can’t really help, but for the latter, for those time when you just need to switch off and delve into something ‘other’, escape your own life and lose yourself in someone else’s. Sometimes all you need is a good book.
And this – pardon my French – is a fucking good book.
Although, you may have to wait… Tinman by Sarah Winman is published on the 27th July 2017 by Tinder Press.
If you’re nice, or if you need healing, I might lend you a copy.
Ramblings of a(nother) Frustrated Writer 
5 thoughts on “A(nother) Review: Tinman by Sarah Winman”