Garner Isaac

'An instant queer classic' (Jon Ransom)
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-0-85730-866-5
Verlag: Verve Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

** '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' - 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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Garner, Curtis

Leseproben

1

The more he read his own name, which was all his profile specified, the more he feared it lacked consequence: Isaac. Too literal among the self-appointed gods and slaves nearby. His photo had been taken at a wedding, before a church doorway and its imposing Gothic arches. He wore a white shirt, an ill-fitting navy blazer, and his mother’s hand rested on his shoulder.

He left the sixth form common room, scrolling through other people’s profiles on his phone. Ambiguous biographies called for scrutiny:

Single heist or regular. Positive, kink-friendly pig for willing partners in crime.

Many opted for transparency:

NO FUR NO FAT NO FEM £££ BAREBACK NOW

Low-quality photography showed Michelangelo chests harnessed in leather, feet in sloppy football socks, their soles black with dirt, or headless bodies in tight underwear, obscured by streaky mirrors in gyms and supermarket toilets. One boy posed before a row of Portaloos at a festival, wearing a flamingo-print shirt and round sunglasses, the pink lenses all but concealing pill-fed pupils. Others lay in their bathtubs; climbed up metal steps at lidos; stood before lakes, castles or famous paintings; sat cross-legged on wind-battered sand dunes; or pinched the Leaning Tower of Pisa between thumb and forefinger. It all felt far-removed from Isaac’s reality, a world he was privy to but not part of, separated by the veil of his inexperience.

A motorbike spluttered through the traffic outside the school gates. There was a rumble of shoes and basketballs as secondary-aged students broke from their fag-smoking knots and spilled into their lessons. Isaac could feel these sounds deep in his body after spending most of the night reading – but ultimately ignoring – what seemed like an endless stream of messages.

The Orwell Building for English, Music and Drama was on the other side of the car park. As he crossed it he caught the eyes of one of the science teachers lighting a cigarette by his car, the crotch of his herringbone trousers offering a vague outline. Seeing teachers smoke still fascinated him, catching a glimpse into their private, fallible lives. Some students were sprawled out on a patch of grass as if acting out the aftermath of a lost battle, bags and jumpers removed, limbs at angles, their eyes closed to the April sun.

A man named ‘No Asians’ sent Isaac a message to say his photo was cute. He posed topless in his own, in front of a long, curved train toilet door and a metal sink. A dragon tattoo wrapped in a Celtic knot spiralled over one shoulder. His phone covered his face and black, rigid hair grew up his forearms. In his biography, he complained about the abundance of ugly people but specified that he was clean, tight and open to most things.

Isaac deleted the message and walked through the double doors of the Orwell Building, where a group of boys were untying their ties from their heads and returning them to their collars. The corridor was narrow and low-ceilinged, reminding Isaac of the lower deck of a ship, with grey carpet tiles spotted black with chewing gum. It smelt like the vintage clothing shop on the high street, with its coalescence of stale food, cleaning products and the sweat of the long dead. The brick walls were painted a similar grey, and a large sign near the entrance read, If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On.

When he arrived at his English classroom he put his phone away.

Cherish had saved him a seat. ‘You said you’d meet me at the fire station,’ she said, sta-tion cut cleanly in two by her own exasperation. The building had been a Lidl for years, but they still called it by its old name.

‘Sorry. Running late.’ He shed his denim jacket and rucksack and sat beside her.

‘Obviously.’ Cherish went back to scribbling on the table in pencil – her name, her initials, three small love hearts – then rubbing it all out with her eraser.

‘Did you read it?’ Isaac asked, removing his pristine copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge from his bag.

‘What do you think?’

Isaac couldn’t bring himself to start it either, feeling tired every time he saw the painting of two bearded Victorian men on the cover. It was the last book on their reading list before their final exam.

Mr Rooke walked in quickly, with a bird’s agile hop. Sixth formers still had to address teachers by their surnames, but since the start of secondary school Isaac had made it his duty to learn as many of their first names as he could. It made him feel equal to his elders.

Mr Rooke’s first name was Ben.

‘Apologies, Year 13,’ he said, turning off the mortuary-white lights. ‘There was an issue with a parent I had to deal with.’ He wore a pair of trousers that didn’t fit him properly, twisting at his knees and baggy around his ankles. His nipples were visible through his shirt, and he had a wide chest and thick thighs, all of which made Isaac imagine him having sex with his wife. Ben had taken on a second existence in Isaac’s head when he masturbated, ever since Isaac had seen him swimming at the leisure centre months before, slicing through the water as precisely as scissors through paper, the pool’s blue mosaic tiles reflecting glittery pixels of sunlight over his body. He suspected Ben swam most mornings and walked to school afterwards, given that his gym bag was always behind his desk, making the classroom smell faintly of chlorine.

‘Sounds like an excuse to me, sir,’ Cherish said.

‘I assure you it isn’t, Cherish.’ Ben twisted the blinds shut. He had an old banker’s lamp with a green glass shade on his desk which he now turned on, as though its dull light in the dark room would inspire an intimate discussion.

There was a coarseness about Ben, in his large hands which now pulled a folder from his laptop bag and the stubble on his neck that he’d missed when shaving. Isaac imagined Ben had been a boisterous child – loud, always outside, getting muddy and breaking bones, the type who would’ve likely bullied Isaac before softening in adolescence.

Ben sat against his desk and faced the class, the fabric of his grey trousers stretching tight across his thighs like curved slate. He’d occasionally run his hands over them during the next forty minutes as he spoke about the nineteenth century while Isaac joined up the lines in his notebook and blacked in the shapes with a biro. At the centre of the shapes was a sketch he’d been working on, which he shielded with his forearm. Ben’s thighs were larger, his waist smaller, and he half-liberated an impressive cartoon bulge from his zipper. He had a smile both celestial and menacing, with a winking crookedness that told Isaac he would always protect him but also punish and humiliate him.

‘Anything to add, Isaac?’ Ben asked, brushing the faint scar on his temple with his little finger.

Isaac put down his pen and a silence followed, the kind that begged to be broken.

‘No,’ Isaac said eventually. ‘Sorry, sir.’

Cherish failed to suppress her laughter, so he pinched the back of her arm.

Seconds ticked by on the clock above the whiteboard, its red, needle-sharp hand stirring an impatience in Isaac that made his right leg tremble. He tried to focus on Ben explaining the difference between ‘significance’ and ‘meaning’ in last year’s exam question, but he was fretting about whether he looked guileless and awkward in his photo. He wanted to inspect more soap-lathered bodies in public showers. Armpit hair wet with sweat. Strained neck tendons. When he first joined the app he was struck by how keen people were to force their nudity upon him and yet maintain such anonymity, full of pride and disdain for themselves simultaneously.

Everyone leapt from their seats when Ben’s lesson ended.

‘Isaac, would you stay behind for a minute?’ he asked.

Isaac snapped his notebook shut.

‘Don’t try and get off with him,’ Cherish said, throwing her bag over her shoulder.

‘Go away,’ he whispered through his teeth as his classmates filed out of the room. Cherish was the last to leave, and she turned to him, sliding her right index finger in and out of the O she’d made with her left hand.

Ben pulled a chair up to Isaac’s desk and sat. His aftershave – a deep, sandalwood-y smell – all but covered a fruity fabric softener. The latter scent made Isaac think of his wife again. Did she wash and iron his clothes? Did they have separate wardrobes or did they share one? He tried to ignore the shape of Cherish at the door, laughing.

Ben leant forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He...