After inexperienced seventeen-year-old Isaac loses his virginity through a dating app a disappointing yet addictive experience he spends his final months before university escaping into a dizzying new world of casual sex with forgettable men. This all changes when he meets twenty-eight-year-old Harrison at a party.
Isaac is immediately infatuated by the handsome, charismatic artist, but while they grow closer, his sense of self becomes increasingly hazy. Harrison's demands shift constantly, and after Isaac tries everything to prove his worthiness, he must take a hard look at his ideas about love, sex and men, and his relationship with himself.
'So vivid and real, it brought a thousand memories rushing back' - Russell T Davies
'Truly impressive: funny, melancholic and acutely real. Isaac takes me back to my own adolescence in London, to being on the precipice of adult life... bracing and uncensorious' - James Cahill, author of Tiepolo Blue
'Carefully written, sexually candid but full of warmth and longing, Isaac is deeply satisfying in its elegance and tenderness' - Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy
'A luminous and beautiful debut about coming-of-age in London today. An instant queer classic' - Jon Ransom, author of The Gallopers
'Garner writes like a queer, twenty-first century Richard Yates: honest, uncompromising, fearless, and completely engrossing' - Alex Pheby, author of Playthings
About the Author :
Curtis Garner was born in Cornwall in 1996. When he was eighteen, he moved to London to study Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Greenwich. He graduated in 2017 and has been working in publishing since. In 2020, he also received an MA with Distinction from the Manchester Writing School, where much of Isaac was written. In his spare time, he reviews novels on Instagram (@queer_novels). He lives in Hackney.
Review :
So vivid and real, it brought a thousand memories rushing back... I loved the sheer power of Isaac's emotions, overwhelming him - that lovely, awful, endless battle, asking of your boyfriend: who are you? Which is really asking: who am I?
A wryly honest tale... It stirred bittersweet memories of wanting to astonish the world even while hating the skin I was in. Garner is clearly one to watch
Garner's impressive debut novel, bold and unflinching, asks how we project different identities onto those whom we love - or think we do
Garner's writing is so wrenchingly tender that it will remind you of glorious (or otherwise) moments from your own misspent youth... One of 2024's most captivating and evocative debut novels
A luminous and beautiful debut about coming-of-age in London today. An instant queer classic
