Isaac - ebook

** '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.

'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

'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, author of How We Named the Stars

'Garner writes like a queer, twenty-first century Richard Yates: honest, uncompromising, fearless, and completely engrossing' - Alex Pheby, author of Playthings

'Garner explores the confusion of casual sex and the brutality of domestic violence with unflinching honesty' - Nicholas Royle, award-winning author and editor

'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, author of This Happy

'Isaac deals with the contemporary landscape of gay male experience... It covers sex, obsession and self-loathing, but is also sweet, tender and domestic' - Dr Paul Bench

'A frank and tender portrayal of young queer identity, interrogating masculinity, family and the body through vividly sensual language... I raced through it!' - Dr Kerry Andrew, author of We Are Together Because

'Isaac deftly captures adolescence in all its restlessness, uncertainty, possibility and pain... 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, author of Palm Meridian

'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, author of Human, Animal

'Explores the vulnerability of growing up as a modern gay man, and the thrilling tensions of power, desire and shame in queer relationships... Scenes from this novel have lingered in my mind for months after reading it' - Lily Lindon, author of Double Booked

This novel contains depictions of sex and domestic violence.