Ah, A-Level summer. That post-exam, pre-uni limbo period where all good sense and rational thinking are abandoned for a month or two. A time when one makes lifelong memories while coming to crushing realisations about oneself, a time when one begins to discover who one truly is. It is fitting, then, that Curtis Garner’s impressive debut novel – Isaac –is set in this dead heat of summer, its eponymous protagonist suspended between worlds: sixth form and university; naivety and independence; boy and man.

An omniscient narrator gazes into Isaac’s troubled mind, following his journey as he loses his virginity via a dating app, and the twin phenomena that follow; the disappointment of how anticlimactic the experience is, and the addiction to the subsequent experiences that entail regardless. Garner’s novel weaves together familiar gay canon events like this one: the midnight Grindr rabbit holes; the complex, awkward relationship with seemingly every man in your life; the loneliness that comes with simply being different.

an intriguing story that sucks the reader in like a painting, digging its claws in and not letting go

More than tracing familiarities of the queer experience, though, Garner introduces more complex themes with the arrival of 28-year-old Harrison, whom Isaac meets at a party. What follows is a fascinating examination of masculinity and self-identity, as Isaac comes to idolise Harrison as much as love him, asking the age-old question: ‘do I want to be with him or do I just want to be him?’. Garner’s prose is incisive and unflinching, describing Isaac’s most unflattering thoughts in sharp detail; as romance bleeds into obsession, Isaac reads books that Harrison recommends, though spends ‘less time absorbing the words than imagining Harrison reading them’.

Isaac’s complex, troubling relationship with sex and his own body is refracted through his daddy issues (his biological father left before he was born). As Isaac interrogates why he depends on the validation of male strangers, so too must he reckon with the uncomfortable parallel that has with the absence of a proper father in his life. He attempts to fill this space with his stepfather and his English teacher, but to diminishing returns, and our tragic hero turns to fleeting intimate encounters to fill the void, or at least to numb the pain and delay the uncomfortable realisations he has to make.

Garner’s prose is incisive and unflinching, describing Isaac’s most unflattering thoughts in sharp detail

The novel would perhaps make for a fitting double-bill with André Aciman’s novel Call Me By Your Name, which similarly uses the vehicle of an age-gap relationship to probe into the horror of self-discovery, of coming of age, and of first love through a queer lens – all filtered through delicate, sensuous writing that maliciously presents itself as romantic (though Garner’s novel, thankfully, makes more of an effort to outwardly portray the central relationship as problematic, especially as Harrison turns abusive). Then again, isn’t the blurring of romance and tragedy the point? Isn’t that something everyone – not just queer people – must endure as we come of age?

In future novels, it would be rewarding to see Garner break further from archetype to present something truly subversive; for now, though, Isaac is still a superb debut that arrives fully-formed with a confident voice, a well-realised protagonist and an intriguing story that sucks the reader in like a painting, digging its claws in and not letting go until the final page. Garner has a bright future in fiction – I’m rooting for him, the same way I rooted for his protagonist.

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