All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle: Extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people

All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle Hardcover, 371 pg. Grand Central Publishing, 2021 Read: November 24-29, 2021 Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

What’s All the Lonely People About?

In the 1950’s Hubert Bird left his home and family in Kingston and went to London in search of work. When we meet him, he’s been a widower for over a decade and has been living shut-off from just about everyone (other than those he runs into doing food shopping, etc.) with only his cat to keep him company.

Until one fateful day (of course, or this’d be a boring book)…

We learn about Hubert’s life in alternating chapters—one in the present and one from his past.

Then

Since arriving in England, Hubert had felt out of place in a whole host of locations in the mother country, everywhere from the streets around Mayfair to the pubs of east London and beyond. But as he stepped off the 9:20 from London Victoria that Saturday morning, all previous experiences paled in comparison to how he felt standing on platform two of Bromley South Station.

He felt like a character from one of the Westerns he enjoyed seeing at the pictures—not the hero, cowboy, or sheriff, but rather the stranger in town. The man who walks into a bar full of life, music, and chatter, only for the whole room to fall into a complete and uneasy silence the moment they notice his presence.

We get glimpses of Hubert’s life from when he decided to leave home, to the early troubles he had finding regular work—employers and fellow employees didn’t exactly welcome “The Windrush Generation” (to put it more than mildly). In the midst of the harassment, undisguised prejudice, and meager wages—Hubert meets and falls in love with a white woman—who falls for him, too, despite her family’s clear wishes. They marry, have a couple of kids, and build a life for themselves—it’s hard and slow going, but they get there.

Eventually, the kids move out and Hubert’s wife dies, and he soon starts living alone.

Now

Hubert talks to his daughter—now a professor in Australia—weekly. He’s ashamed to tell her that he’s cut ties with the outside world, so he invents some friends and spends time each week inventing activities that they’ve been doing so he can have something to tell her when she calls.

Then one day, a new neighbor, Ashleigh, drops by to introduce herself—which just flummoxes Hubert and he cuts the conversation short, he’s so out of practice in interacting with people. Ashleigh’s one of the friendliest, most hopeful characters I’ve encountered recently. After running into him briefly a couple of times, she shows up at Hubert’s door in a panic—she has a job interview and her babysitter just bailed. Can Hubert watch her daughter while she interviews?

“Look, me see you in a pickle. Really, me see that. But have you lost your mind? You can’t just ask a complete stranger to look after your child. Don’t you watch the news?”

“Of course I do,” said Ashleigh. “And yes, I know sometimes the world’s a horrible place, but not always. Sometimes it’s a lovely place where nice things happen for no reason and I’d much rather…” She began to get upset. “I’d much rather live in that world than the other one!”

Hubert gets sucked in—he helps out, and the trio ends up spending more and more time together. Slowly

Meanwhile, Hubert’s daughter is due to come for a visit—his fictional life is about to be exposed. It’s about time for him to actually make some friends. Thankfully, Ashleigh’s been reminding Hubert that life is better when he opens himself up to others and he starts to do just that. Maybe he can have something to tell her after all (after ‘fessing up to the deception). And then Ashleigh gets an idea that ensures he’s going to have a lot to report.

So, what did I think about All the Lonely People?

“It’s easy to waste a lot of time trying to think of a perfect solution to a problem. But sometimes the only thing you can do is cross your fingers and have a go.”

I haven’t read a Mike Gayle book for something like 15 years (just couldn’t find them for a while, and then forgot to look), in that time he went from what I remember as Hornby-esque, but maybe with more jokes. In this book? He reminded me of Fredrik Backman, just with a different accent.

It was just as heartwarming, just as tragic, and with a similar kind of almost impossibly happy ending tinged with sadness that Backman’s noted for. And you don’t care how realistic it is, because you just loved everything that led to that point

I almost instantly liked Hubert and was quickly drawn into his story. You get invested through him (and if you don’t like him by midway through chapter two—just DNF this, it’s not a book for you). I liked Ashleigh almost as much as him, but when it comes to everyone else, you like them/care about them for Hubert’s sake.

For example, when his wife died—it hit me hard (which is odd because I knew about when she’d die even when we met her). But I didn’t feel too bad for her, but my heart broke because of what it did to Hubert. The same goes for the rest of what happens–you care because of Hubert, you’re invested in the story and the antics of his friends because of Hubert, you want things to go well in the end for Hubert’s sake. And you get intensely happy about the last chapter or two because of Hubert. Picking up a theme?

Gayle’s writing was warm and inviting—you get sucked in and carried along because of how it makes you feel, more than because of the plot or even the characters. I’m not always crazy about that kind of writing, but when it works well, it’s really effective (as it is here).

There’s one thing Gayle does that made me mad, and I came close to starting to outline a rant about it—but in the end, I got over it. I thought about DNFing the book! I could still go on a rant about the authorial decisions about it (this is so tricky to talk about in the abstract), because I am still mad, but the end product justified it.

Sure, I said the emotional weight of the story is more important overall to this than the story or characters–but I’ve got nothing against either of them. I liked and admired Hubert. I would love to hang out with Ashleigh and her kid (and her new Significant Other). The story of Hubert’s life feels so real—and is likely freakishly close to so many lives—and the world could use novels about lives like these.

This is such a heartwarming novel, if you get to the end and aren’t in some way cheering over the Capraesque ending? You should try and schedule an electrocardiogram—stat. And you just have to love that epilogue that shows that Hubert isn’t Eleanor Rigby, no matter what the title suggests.

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