Tin Man

This book was slim but packed an outsize emotional wallop. It's a sweet, wistful story about a pair of young men, Ellis and Michael, growing up in Oxford, and the bond between them that shifts as they grow up and their circumstances change, and how Ellis winds up alone in his 30s. It's all character development, very little in the way of plot, which tend to be the books that work best for me. The prose is simple but poignant. It doesn't use quotation marks to set off dialogue, which some readers find irritating but I found worked just fine in context. I really really loved it, it was beautiful and heartwarming and heartbreaking.