Books and Brunch with Sarah Winman and Eden Robinson

Author photos courtesy of publisher.  All other photos by Girl Well Read—do not use without written permission.

Blue Heron Books hosted "Books & Brunch" which featured Sarah Winman and Eden Robinson.

Sarah and Eden engaged the audience with readings from their books.  They were joined by moderator Wendy O'Brien to discuss their writing processes, inspirations, and themes of their newest works.  A question and answer period as well as a book signing followed.

Sarah spoke of how Ellis is coming out of grief and trying to find meaning.  Interestingly, the main character has the least amount of story.  Annie is the most important character and it was a conscious decision to not give her a story other than through Ellis and Michael—she is an enigma.

Tin Man is a character-driven novel about ordinary life the turns into an exquisite tale.  It is a quiet and beautiful book that works on a different level.  This deeply moving story starts in 1950 with the shadow of a marriage hanging over the book that spans until the late 90s.

Winman's book is a story of care—young men looking after young men when they have been abandoned by state, church, and family.  This lexicon of love is framed by death but formed by love.  The themes of compassion, empathy, dignity, and care are explored through the lens of van Gogh's Sunflowers.  Ellis' mother owned a reproduction of the print and she sees acceptance when she looks at it.

Tin Man

“This is an astoundingly beautiful book. It drips with tenderness. It breaks your heart and warms it all at once.”–Matt Haig, author of How to Stop Time.

From internationally bestselling author Sarah Winman comes an unforgettable and heartbreaking novel celebrating love in all its forms, and the little moments that make up the life of one man.

This is almost a love story. But it’s not as simple as that.

Ellis and Michael are twelve-year-old boys when they first become friends, and for a long time it is just the two of them, cycling the streets of Oxford, teaching themselves how to swim, discovering poetry, and dodging the fists of overbearing fathers. And then one day this closest of friendships grows into something more.

But then we fast-forward a decade or so, to find that Ellis is married to Annie, and Michael is nowhere in sight. Which leads to the question: What happened in the years between?

With beautiful prose and characters that are so real they jump off the page, Tin Man is a love letter to human kindness and friendship, and to loss and living.

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SARAH WINMAN is the author of two novels, When God Was a Rabbit and A Year of Marvelous Ways.

She grew up in Essex and now lives in London. She attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to act in theatre, film, and television.

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Eden Robinson is a method writer who inserts herself into the process with lots of laughing and crying.  She is absolutely delightful.

I'm not familiar with Robinson's Trickster series but after the discussion, I'm intrigued.  She just published the second installment (that she actually wrote first) which takes place  primarily in Vancouver—Jared has moved in with an eccentric aunt who is a writer.  He is challenged by his sobriety and is doubting his intelligence.  He is trying to convince himself that he is not insane, or a drunk however he can't escape his father, the Trickster.  Filled with Robinson's own blend of wit and dysfunction, fans of Son of a Trickster won't be disappointed with Trickster Drift.

EDEN ROBINSON Haisla/Heiltsuk novelist is the author of a collection of short stories written when she was a Goth called Traplines, which won the Winifred Holtby Prize in the UK. Her two previous novels, Monkey Beach and Blood Sports, were written before she discovered she was gluten-intolerant and tend to be quite grim, the latter being especially gruesome because half-way through writing the manuscript, Robinson gave up a two-pack a day cigarette habit and the more she suffered, the more her characters suffered.

Monkey Beach won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for Fiction.

Son of a Trickster, the first instalment of her Trickster trilogy, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In 2017, she won the Writers' Trust of Canada Fellowship.

She lives in Kitimat, BC.