The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz wishes he only had a heart; And that is Ellis’ problem too. Ellis has reached middle age and has finally decided it’s time to live his own life rather than the one that his father and society expect from him. He is grieving after the death of his wife, Annie and best friend, Michael five years ago. “ I’m stuck”, He tells the ghost of his wife. “Go and find him” is her reply.

So he gives up his dreary job making cars at Cowley Motors, starts tidying up his garden and slowly recuperates, rediscovering the joys of living….. In the meantime he realises that by marrying Annie he has denied his homosexuality and missed being with the real love of his life, Michael. At the same time he has succumbed to his father’s expectations and given up his wish to be an artist. The main characters are Annie, Ellis and Michael; a ménage a trois; three young people in love with each other and with life, whose relationships burn with a purity and vigour that only happens once in a lifetime. The writing is sparse, concise, but each sentence is perfect and not a word is wasted. The plot moves at a rapid pace: one falls in love with the characters.

The story is set mostly in Oxford and the south of France. The book opens in the present; Ellis now in his late forties, lives on Divinity Rd and works at Cowley Motors. Ellis had wanted to be an artist, had promised his dying mother he would stay on at school and study art; but his father had wanted Ellis to be more manly! The novel jumps about in time; a retrospective tells the stories of how the three met up, drew apart, came together again after many years; but ultimately were torn apart by Annie and Michael’s death. Ellis’ mother, Dora, has a strange fascination for Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, a copy of which she has won in a raffle and hangs on her wall. Ellis is sensitive, gentle and artistic. And, it turns out, bisexual. Mabel is a friend who runs a shop on the Cowley Rd. Her grandson, Michael, appears one night to live with her following the death of his father. Michael and Ellis are instantly soul mates, both about twelve years old, both interested in Art, Literature and both, as it transpires, gay. Dora talks to Ellis and Michael about the Van Gogh and she tells them “ Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things. Never forget that, you two..” The painting she says “ –the light, the colour, the passion, it’s- It’s LIFE. “

Dora dies when Ellis is about sixteen and after a brutal encounter with his father, Ellis moves in with Michael. Ellis and Michael share a bed and slowly their gay relationship evolves. They spend the summer of 1969 in France and in love; they come so close to making a new start, but Ellis’ guilt drives them back to Oxford. And this is where, one Xmas, Ellis meets and instantly falls in love with Annie. All three clearly love each other, but ultimately Annie and Ellis wed and Michael withdraws. Michael immerses himself in the London gay scene; his lover, G, dies of AIDS. In his grief, he returns to the south of France, where he and Ellis had been blissfully happy all those years ago; he sees the sunflower fields that inspired Van Gogh. He then returns to Oxford and to Annie and Ellis, only for Annie and Michael to then die in a car crash, leaving Ellis alone and bewildered as to his future….. After his cycling accident, some five years after Annie and Michael’s death, Ellis gives up work. He retrieves “The Sunflowers” painting from his father and a box containing Michael’s memoir, which explains his several years absence, whilst looking after G in London. After reading Michael’s memoir Ellis realises his route to recovery is to follow the metaphorical yellow brick road to Arles for the sunflowers, the light and the memory of who he and Michael might have been, and once were….

This is then, ultimately, a love story about two young men falling in love, but also about the ability of three people to all love each other; for gay, bi and heterosexual love to happily coexist, perhaps? It is also about grief, loneliness, being true to oneself; about the evolving nature of what being a man means ; about the complex father son relationship, and about hope!