Tin Man

2.5

Messy. I can't even call this “over described” because it doesn't really describe much, it just dumps street names at you hoping it sticks. The whole “June 1990, France” chapter feels like the epithome of the “Going to France? Learn everything in hindsight (they hate tourists)” talk, because one thing is giving me spatial context, the other is just giving me meaningless french words for 40 pages expecting that I'm aware of every single corner in France.
The plot itself is loose, it's divided into two parts that felt that should develop together. That doesn't happen and we just get two points of view that sometimes converge through repetition (“Remember when X did that?”, “Remember when I, X, did that?”).
And of course, all of that could've worked really well either way, a lot of books do these things!, so what went wrong? Too many themes, not enough time to deal with any of them, I think. I know exactly what Sarah was trying to do but that's nothing if the narrative itself doesn't convince me of such: a lot of things happened and I didn't feel a single thing.

Really quite beautiful. I found myself drawing out my reading time for this book, and almost wanting to find a tree to sit under and slowly soak up this story.

It's a story of love, loss and loneliness (or so I read), and it's was beautifully paced dropping back and forth from different points in time for the two main characters. Describing emotions and the tiniest moments in such a loving and tender way. It truly made me want to slow down and just watch the love that moves around us every day.

I want to give this a 4.5 but the stars apparently must be whole or not at all. I just found the ending a little abrupt. But that may have also been confused by the fact that the last 6% (10-ish minutes) of the book was an interview with the author (which was interesting enough), it just threw me when the tale was finished.

All the same, quite beautiful.