A callow young man is forced to grow up
GOING HOME TOM LAMONT 320pp. Sceptre. £16.99.
WHEN TÉO ERSKINE makes his monthly return trip to Enfield to see his irascible father, Vic, he feels “the grief, the guilt” of not visiting more regularly. And with good reason: still leading a semi-adolescent life at thirty, Téo would rather hang out with his wayward buddy Ben Mossman, drinking and playing poker, or moon over his teenage sweetheart, Lia – now a single mother to the two-year-old Joel – than see his dad, who is in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. It is only when disaster strikes and Lia takes her own life, leaving Joel in Téo’s care, that he is forced to face the responsibilities of adulthood.
So begins the debut novel from the journalist Tom Lamont. In many ways, Téo resembles the decent everyman heroes from the novels of Nick Hornby, David Nicholls and Barney Norris: keen to rise to the occasion but conflicted over just about everything life requires of a young man. Téo is shocked by the demands of his sudden and unexpected parenthood: “The relentlessness and repetitiveness of childcare ... it was tiring and it was total”. He quickly realizes that Joel needs him “to be someone with coping in their bones”. The question the book asks is: can Téo parent himself into maturity?
Set in the vividly rendered Enfield Jewish community, the novel is narrated by Téo, Vic, Ben and a fourth voice, the local rabbi Sybil Challis. When the question of Joel’s paternity becomes urgent, it is Sybil, doubting her faith after Lia’s death, w
