** 'SO VIVID AND REAL, IT BROUGHT A THOUSAND MEMORIES RUSHING BACK' - Russell T Davies **
** 'AN INSTANT QUEER CLASSIC' - Jon Ransom, author of The Gallopers **
Set in London across a single, life-altering summer, Isaac explores 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.
A powerful coming-of-age story for our times, Isaac is perfect for fans of Outline Of My Lover by Douglas Martin, What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell and 100 Boyfriends by Brontez Purnell.
‘Fast-paced, raw and emotionally intelligent; brilliant on the vulnerability inherent in so many first relationships’ - Daily Mail
‘The gay dating scenes crackle with energy’ - Financial Times
‘Garner captures the complexities of coming of age as a young, queer person…Isaac’s journey is every queer reader’s journey delivered with wit, honesty and tenderness’ - Attitude
‘Garner’s novel, bold and unflinching, asks how we project different identities onto those whom we love - or think we do’ - Telegraph
‘One of 2024’s most captivating and evocative debut novels’- AnOther
‘Isaac announces Garner as a significant new voice in queer literature’ - Scene Magazine
'Truly impressive: funny, melancholic and acutely real. Isaac takes me back to my own adolescence in London... bracing and uncensorious' - James Cahill, author of Tiepolo Blue
'A richly textured, tender and unflinching coming-of-age story about sex and sexuality, relationships and power, and the psychic toll of first love. Immensely readable' - Lara Williams, author of Supper Club
'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, author of How We Named the Stars
'A beautifully crafted and clear-sighted exploration of a young man making sense of contemporary gay life' - Ben Fergusson, author of An Honest Man
'Compulsively readable, Isaac is both an entertaining bildungsroman and a hyper-real snapshot of contemporary gay life' - Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men
'Garner writes like a queer, twenty-first century Richard Yates: honest, uncompromising, fearless, and completely engrossing' - Alex Pheby, author of Playthings
'So carefully written, sexually candid but full of warmth and longing... Deeply satisfying in its elegance and tenderness' - Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy
'A frank and tender portrayal of young queer identity... I raced through it!' - Kerry Andrew, author of We Are Together Because
'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, author of Double Booked
This novel contains depictions of sex and domestic violence.
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 Manchester School of Creative Writing, where much of Isaac was written. In his spare time, he reviews novels on Instagram (@queer_novels). He lives in Hackney.
