20 Books of Summer: All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle

Hubert has come from Jamaica to England as part of the Windrush generation. Living in poor housing in Brixton and suffering horrendous racism (plus dreadful English food and winter weather), he starts working in a warehouse. There he meets Joyce, a white girl from South London. Her parents are horrified, but Joyce knows her own mind, and soon the couple are married and living in Bromley (where I myself grew up, and from where I and most of my more privileged friends were only too keen to escape. It's interesting, then, to see it as someone's safe haven - as it had been for my parents, escaping what they saw as the slums of New Cross; needless to say, New Cross is now cool as cool, and Bromley...well, it's no.) Hubert and Joyce have two children, Rose and David. Despite Hubert and Joyce's efforts, her family never speaks to them again. 

As All the Lonely People begins, Joyce is dead and Hubert is living alone with his cat, Puss. To stop Rose - who is now a university professor in Australia - worrying, every time she calls he tells her all about his many friends. His stories are elaborate and detailed - but that's what they are, stories. In reality, Hubert has no friends; he lives the life of a virtual hermit and talks to no one. He used to have friends, especially his former Brixton roommate Gus, but something happened five years ago, and that something ended Hubert's social life. He doesn't need people any more.

Now Rose is coming home for a visit. Hubert needs to cover up his lies by finding some friends, fast. But how?

Meanwhile, young single mother Ashleigh has just moved in next door with her little girl Layla. She's new to the area and determined to make friends, specifically with Hubert. Hubert is equally determined not to let her. He doesn't want anyone in his life, and he certainly doesn't want to be babysitting a toddler. 

It takes several false starts before Hubert begins to let Ashleigh into his life, but when he does they both realise that loneliness has become a worldwide problem. They decide to try to do something about it - in Bromley at least. They recruit a motley crew of helpers; Emils, a Latvian delivery driver, Jan, a widow doing shifts at the local working men's club, Maude, who comes to their first meeting for the free tea and biscuits - and stays, Randip from the vet's, librarian Tony, whose relationship broke down and left him socially stranded, and Fiona, who strives to keep up appearances but is lost since her husband died just 6 months after retiring. Together they start the Campaign to End Loneliness in Bromley. 

In less able hands, the story would end there. Job done; they all lived happily ever after. But Mike Gayle is far better than that.

Throughout the novel, he takes us back to various times in Hubert's life; his childhood with his mother in Jamaica, his first years in London with Gus and their other West Indian friends, his marriage, his children's early years, and the many life events that happen to us all over the decades. And gradually we learn that Hubert's life is not as straightforward as we may have thought. Terrible things have happened, things that have wounded him so badly that he feels he will never recover. 

As the Campaign gains momentum, Hubert and Ashleigh grow in confidence; they even appear on This Morning (once Hubert has recovered from the horror of having to wear make up...'like that Boy George fella that Rose used to like') and the story of 'The Windrush Warrior' is picked up by the national press. 

But Rose's visit is growing ever closer. Hubert now has real friends - but will Rose find out that he's been lying to her for years? 

And then, out of the blue, Hubert's past catches up with him; it does so in a horrible way, and worse, it forces Hubert to admit things to Ashleigh, things he doesn't want to be true.

For Hubert, the campaign is over. He retreats behind his bolted front door. Now it'll be him and Puss against the world again. It's the only way he can cope,

'...he'd had enough. Of being open, of being around people. He wanted to go back to how things used to be, before the committee, before Jan, before Ashleigh....."Me just not doing it. Me just want to be left alone."'

Mike Gayle's writing is so good that when he delivers his thunderbolt revelation, we are stunned, but we are not disbelieving. It's a cracker of a twist, but unlike so many twists, this one fits perfectly; for once I didn't feel manipulated or unfairly fooled, just impressed with Gayle's seemingly effortless expertise. 

But Gayle is a kind writer too. He doesn't spare us his characters' pain, but he also brings us their redemption. I won't spoil things by telling you what happens at the end of All the Lonely People, but I will say that I found the final chapters completely satisfying. 

This is a book about so many things; love, marriage, parenting, racism, prejudice, loneliness and isolation - but most of all it is about the power of friendship, because in the end it's our friends, whether we met them fifty years ago or just last week, who get us through life. All the Lonely People is ultimately life-affirming without being too unrealistic or twee. Hubert Bird is a wonderful creation, as is Ashleigh and all the characters around them. I look forward to reading much more from Gayle (who has written at least sixteen other novels.)

All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle is published by Hodder & Stoughton (and for anyone involved in #52BookClubChallenge2024, Hodder and Stoughton is handily a Hachette company.)