Going Home Audiobook By Tom Lamont cover art

Going Home

A Novel

Pre-order: Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Going Home

By: Tom Lamont
Narrated by: Jot Davies
Pre-order: Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Pre-order for $18.20

Pre-order for $18.20

Confirm pre-order
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

Going Home is a sparkling, funny, bighearted story of family and what happens when three men—all of whom are completely ill-suited for fatherhood—take charge of a toddler following an unexpected loss

Téo Erskine, now in his thirties, has moved on from childish things: He has a good job, a slick apartment in London, and when he heads back to the suburbs on the occasional weekend to visit his old friends, he makes sure everyone knows he can afford to pick up the tab. So what if he asks a few too many questions about Lia, the girl of their group, wondering if she will come out, if she’s seeing anyone, if she might give him another shot? Téo is hazily aware that something possibly happened between Lia and Ben Mossam, Téo’s closest friend and his greatest annoyance, but he can’t bring himself to ask. Lia, meanwhile, has no time to indulge their rivalry. She’s now the single mother of a toddler son, a kid named Joel that Téo occasionally (and halfheartedly) offers to babysit.

Téo is home for one such weekend when the unthinkable happens—a tragedy in the heart of their group—and he suddenly finds himself the unlikely guardian for little Joel. Together with his father, Vic, Ben Mossam, and Sybil, Lia’s beguiling rabbi, they bide time until they can find a proper home for Joel, teaching him to play video games, plying him with chicken nuggets and waffles, and learning to sing him lullabies at night. But when a juvenile mistake leads to a terrible betrayal, Téo must decide what kind of man he wants to be. Wise, relatable, and blissfully laugh-out-loud funny, Going Home is a captivating first novel that explores the mysterious ways children can force us to grow up fast while simultaneously keeping us young forever.

©2025 Tom Lamont (P)2025 Random House Audio
Family Life Friendship Literary Fiction
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

“It’s rare to read something that captures with such unsentimentality a child’s range, their rapidly shifting obsessions, the quiddities of their language, their cunning wiles....Joel...is fully singular, tightly observed....[Going Home] has the kind of plot that feels fine tuned and long thought out....Weather systems, from a child’s tantrum to a passing burst of rain, are logged in sprightly, unexpected language briskly evading cliché....I’ve read Going Home twice now and I still don’t feel as if I’ve tapped its power. Children seem to be more alive than adults, keener, less jaded, and this novel feels the same, pepped up and gorgeous, just bristling with life.”—Olivia Laing, The Guardian

“I will never forget these characters: so pained and funny, so brilliantly drawn, wrestled with and forgiven.”—Helen Garner, author of This House of Grief

“A remarkably assured, moving, melancholy and funny debut.”—John Banville, bestselling author of The Lock-Up

What listeners say about Going Home

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.