Going Home by Tom Lamont; New York: Alfred A. Knopf; © 2025; ISBN 9780593-803240; 276 pages; $28; Publication date: January 14, 2025.
SAN DIEGO – The plot of this delightfully written, dreamlike narrative revolves around Joel, a preschooler whose mother Lea committed suicide after asking Teo, a male friend who admired her from afar, to look after him. The life of Teo’s elderly father, Vic, apparently is resuscitated after Joel enters their lives.
Ben, Teo’s best friend with whom Lea had a brief sexual liaison, tries to ignore the fact that he might be Joel’s father, but Teo and Vic attempt to warm Ben’s playboy heart towards Joel by guilting him into spending more time with the preschooler.
Joel is an energetic, fast-learning, independent minded tyke with a penchant for inventing games and becoming absorbed in them.
Another important character is Sybil, a probationary rabbi who perhaps is too liberal for her synagogue’s conservative board of directors. She develops an affection for Ben.
Tension develops when one character decides he is more deserving of being Joel’s guardian than any of the others.
What will become of little Joel is the end point of this novel, but if you read it only for its plot, you’d be missing some wonderful descriptive passages such as how absorbed an adult can become in a child’s game; the sights and sounds of a journey by train from central England to Scotland; and the pleasures of gamboling at the lakes of the Scottish countryside.
If you choose to read this one, do yourself a favor and read it slowly, drinking in the descriptive passages that may be more memorable than the conclusion.
*
Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World