“I’m belting out ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ at the top of my lungs as I pull up in front of the house.”
I’ve been reading Mike Gayle’s stuff for a long time, and he remains one of my favourite writers. Not one to take on massive worldbuilding projects or fill his stories with aliens or witches, Gayle instead deals simply with human relationships and matters pertaining to friendship, family and romance. Once again, he steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park.
Kerry Hayes has grown up on a tough south London estate, a single mum to Kian. Working as a cleaner in houses she could never afford, she strives to be a better mother than her own, who abandoned her to the horrors of children’s homes. Unable to forget her past, she has fought her own corner every day. Noah Martineau, however, is a successful barrister with a fancy home, beautiful family and an upbringing of great privilege and security. He was adopted as child and has never been especially curious about his past. When a letter arrives, however, informing him of a sister that he never knew existed, both Noah and Kerry’s lives are turned upside down.
Now bound by blood and many years of distance, Kerry and Noah get to know one another and learn more about each other’s very different backgrounds. While both are thrilled to learn of the familial links, nothing is ever as simple as that. Noah’s marriage is on the rocks because of his inability to communicate or talk about his past, and Kerry has more to ask of him than a simple reconnection, as she struggles with her own private issues that will impact the life of her and her son more than she could ever have imagined.
Watching Gayle’s career as a reader has been fascinating. I often described his early books as being chatty and informal, like a talk in the pub with a close mate. As he’s progressed, his style has become somewhat more mature, less out-and-out hilarious (although never dry) and all the better and more heart-breaking for it. Kerry, Noah and their families are immediately real and leap from the page, as if you know them and I’m not going to pretend there weren’t genuine tears at a couple of points in the novel as we begin to fall so hard for them and really, truly want only the best for them. It’s a wonderful addition to Gayle’s catalogue, even more poignant than the equally brilliant The Man I Think I Know, and it’s been such a joy to spend some time in his pages again.
In a society that is obsessed with telling stories about romantic love, it’s refreshing to find a really great novel about the importance of family. Like the phenomenal musical Blood Brothers, here we open up the debate again as to whether who we are comes from who we are or how we’re raised. We see people born and raised in both good and bad situations and going in all sorts of directions from there. I think we know full well from just looking at the news at times, just because one is born into wealth and goes to a good school, it does not automatically mean you are a better person and loaded with more compassion, just as coming from a difficult background doesn’t mean you’ll end up on the wrong side of the law. Gayle, as a black writer, is all well positioned to discuss the complexities of class and race, which play something of a role in the novel thanks to Noah being a mixed-race man adopted into an affluent white family.
A beautiful novel about hope, family, belonging, and how your background does not define you.
Did you know that as well as reviewing everything I read, I also write novels, too? My books blend black humour with light horror, crossing genres with ordinary characters dealing with extraordinary circumstances. Head over to wherever you buy books to take a look at my two offerings. The first, The Atomic Blood-stained Bus, introduces you to a cannibal, an ex-god and the last witches of Britain, while the second, The Third Wheel, follows a man who is tired of being single while all his friends get married, but has a change of priority when aliens invade the planet. I hope you enjoy!