Set in London across a single, life-altering summer, Isaac interrogates masculinity and queerness in the digital age and offers a fresh take on desire and intimacy, adolescent obsession and dangerous first love.
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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"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
"I loved Isaac. It's so carefully written, sexually candid but full of warmth and longing, populated by relatable, believable, flesh-and-blood characters. Deeply satisfying in its elegance and tenderness." - Niamh Campbell
"Compulsively readable, Isaac is both an entertaining bildungsroman and a hyper-real snapshot of contemporary gay life for an artistically precocious and charmingly naive young man. I rooted for Isaac all the way through, and now I'm rooting for Curtis Garner to write more novels." - Christopher Castellani
"Isaac deftly captures adolescence in all its restlessness, uncertainty, possibility and pain... This is a book you can taste and smell, soaked with wine and cigarette smoke. It leaves you aching at times, returned to that agony and thrill of first love." - Grace Flahive
"In elegant prose, Garner explores the destabilising power of first loves, the heady danger of falling for somebody at an age when we're prone to idealism and haven't yet grown into our identity and desires. A sexy, unflinching debut. I loved it!" - Seth Insua
"Isaac thinks sensitively about masculinity, its potential for softness, beauty, and brutality. Scenes from this novel have lingered in my mind for months." - Lily Lindon
"Garner's titular character encapsulates all the wide-eyed wonderment and boundless bruising of a queer awakening. Isaac will have you smiling and screaming in equal measure as he navigates his final summer before university." - Andrés N Ordorica
"Garner writes like a queer, twenty-first century Richard Yates: honest, uncompromising, fearless, and completely engrossing." - Alex Pheby
"A luminous and beautiful debut about coming-of-age in London today. An instant queer classic." - Jon Ransom
"Garner explores the confusion of casual sex and the brutality of domestic violence with unflinching honesty." - Nicholas Royle
"I loved Isaac. It's so carefully written, sexually candid but full of warmth and longing, populated by relatable, believable, flesh-and-blood characters. Deeply satisfying in its elegance and tenderness." - Niamh Campbell
"Compulsively readable, Isaac is both an entertaining bildungsroman and a hyper-real snapshot of contemporary gay life for an artistically precocious and charmingly naive young man. I rooted for Isaac all the way through, and now I'm rooting for Curtis Garner to write more novels." - Christopher Castellani
"Isaac deftly captures adolescence in all its restlessness, uncertainty, possibility and pain... This is a book you can taste and smell, soaked with wine and cigarette smoke. It leaves you aching at times, returned to that agony and thrill of first love." - Grace Flahive
"In elegant prose, Garner explores the destabilising power of first loves, the heady danger of falling for somebody at an age when we're prone to idealism and haven't yet grown into our identity and desires. A sexy, unflinching debut. I loved it!" - Seth Insua
"Isaac thinks sensitively about masculinity, its potential for softness, beauty, and brutality. Scenes from this novel have lingered in my mind for months." - Lily Lindon
"Garner's titular character encapsulates all the wide-eyed wonderment and boundless bruising of a queer awakening. Isaac will have you smiling and screaming in equal measure as he navigates his final summer before university." - Andrés N Ordorica
"Garner writes like a queer, twenty-first century Richard Yates: honest, uncompromising, fearless, and completely engrossing." - Alex Pheby
"A luminous and beautiful debut about coming-of-age in London today. An instant queer classic." - Jon Ransom
"Garner explores the confusion of casual sex and the brutality of domestic violence with unflinching honesty." - Nicholas Royle
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Used availability for Curtis Garner's Isaac