Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Mike Gayle was born and raised in Birmingham, UK. After earning a Sociology degree, he moved to London to become a journalist and ended up as an advice columnist for a teenage girls' magazine before becoming Features Editor for another teen magazine. He has written for a variety of publications including the Sunday Times, the Guardian, and Cosmo.
Mike became a full-time novelist in 1997 and has written thirteen novels, which have been translated into more than thirty languages. After stints in London and Manchester, Mike now resides in Birmingham with his wife, two kids, and a rabbit.
Mike Gayle's website
This bio was last updated on 06/29/2022. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
Your parents' immigrant story is the foundation of Hubert's story. What can you share
with us about your parents' story?
Unlike Hubert, who arrived by boat from the West Indies in the late 1950s, my parents arrived a
decade later by plane. Both Hubert's and my parents' generation came to the UK having been
invited to do so by the government to help meet the labor shortage in the postwar years. Instead
of being welcomed, however, they were met with racism and prejudice at every turn, some of it
overt, some of it more subtle, but all of it a shocking reality check. The mother country that they
had been taught about at school turned out not to be a very loving parent.
What made you want to write a story about a lonely person?
As Rose says in the book, "Loneliness is an epidemic," and I wanted to look at this phenomenon
through a single character. One of the questions I was curious about was, how do lonely people
become lonely people? Are they born or are they made? As we look across Hubert's life we see
him leave his family in Jamaica, move countries, meet Joyce, start a new family, and then
gradually, one by one, he loses his new family and his life empties out. There's nothing unusual
about Hubert's story in a ...
Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, and&#... (more)
If you enjoyed:
All the Lonely People
Try:
A Man Called Ove
by Fredrik Backman
Elizabeth Berg is the author of many bestselling novels, including Open House (an Oprah's Book Club selection), Talk Before Sleep, and The Year of Pleasures, as well as the short story collection The Day I Ate Whatever I... (more)
If you enjoyed:
All the Lonely People
Try:
The Story of Arthur Truluv
by Elizabeth Berg
We recommend 6 similar authors
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
