Excerpt from All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Hubert was dreading telling his mother about his plans. The year before, when his sister Vivian had moved to Kingston to train as a teacher, his mother had been inconsolable for weeks, so he dreaded to think how she'd feel losing her eldest son. This was why he had picked a date to leave that was a little way off in the future. It would give her time to get used to the idea, for his siblings to learn the ropes around the house, and, if need be, for them to find someone to employ to help around the farm.

As he approached the home that he shared with his mother and younger siblings, Fulton and Cora, he sniffed the air. Woodsmoke and the unmistakable aroma of one of his favorite meals: pork, stewed peas, and rice. He tracked his mother down to the cooking shack at the rear of their one-story wooden house, which had been built by his grandfather. She was wearing a clean white apron over an old faded blue floral dress with a yellow silk headscarf tied over her hair.

Stepping out of the shack, its walls and roof made of sheets of corrugated iron, she greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. Before speaking, Hubert studied her for a moment, suddenly keenly aware that there were now a finite number of times he would see her before he left.

Lillian was tall and elegant but at the same time formidable, a force to be reckoned with. She had no time for fools or small talk but would show the greatest kindness to anyone in need. People often told Hubert that he was the spitting image of his mother, with her high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, but Lillian always claimed that he had a greater likeness to his late father than any of his siblings.

"How are you, son?"

"Me good, thanks, Mother. And me have some good news. Me… me… going to England."

His mother raised an eyebrow, but he could see that she wasn't angry or upset.

"Are you now?" she said. "And there was me thinking all this extra work you've been taking on was to buy me a fancy birthday present!"

She took his hand and held it tightly.

"It's the greatest shame your country has nothing to offer you. But that's the thing about Jamaica at the present time: there are more dogs than bones, but in England all the bones a dog could eat."

She took his face in her hands and kissed his cheek fiercely.

"You go full your belly up, Hubert Bird! Go full your belly and make me proud!"

The journey to England in January 1958 had been rough, not least because an hour into his three-week voyage Hubert discovered that despite several uneventful trips on his uncle Leonard's fishing boat in his youth, it turned out that he was somewhat susceptible to seasickness. By the time the ship arrived in Southampton, however, not only had he learned the best way to combat it, which was to eat as little as possible, but he had also vowed that he was never getting on a boat again. When the time came, he decided, his return journey home would have to be by plane.

From Southampton Hubert caught the train to Waterloo and was met by Gus straight from a long shift at a telephone factory on the outskirts of the city. It had been good to see Gus after so long apart, but Hubert couldn't help but be taken aback by the change in his friend's appearance. The Gus that Hubert remembered was tall, broad-shouldered, and brimming with confidence, but the man standing in front of him looked thin, drawn, and tired, all of which made him seem smaller somehow. Hubert wanted to ask what was wrong but thought better of it. Instead, as they made their way back to Gus's rented room in Brixton, he allowed his friend to grill him on the news from back home, or as Gus put it: "Smiler, man, tell me who dead, who born, and which of the girls miss me most?"

After a night spent in Gus's digs, sleeping top to tail in a tiny lumpy bed in a sparsely furnished, freezing-cold room, Hubert made his first visit to the Labor Exchange. It was a daunting prospect made all the more uncomfortable when, despite informing the clerk that he had experience in bookkeeping and carpentry, he was handed a piece of paper marked "General laborer" and told he would be starting work that very afternoon at a building site in Stockwell.

Excerpted from All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle. Copyright © 2022 by Mike Gayle. Excerpted by permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.