This is a book about a lot of things – grief, hope, friendship, love. It’s also about what you’d do if you stumbled into the woods at dawn, found something extraordinary there, and decided to take it home.

It’s a tale that might seem familiar. But how it speaks to you will depend on how you’ve lived until now.

Sometimes, to get out of the woods, you have to go into them. Isaac and the Egg is one of the most hopeful, honest and wildly imaginative novels you will ever read.

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EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT THAT EGG BOOK:

‘I read it in one breath… true and tragic and funny and hopeful and big – big enough somehow to contain all of our stories and all of our lives inside it’ JOANNA GLEN

‘This book is just magic’ KATE SAWYER

‘A mad, sad, funny debut’ PATRICK GALE

‘Fresh, original and beautifully written’ RUTH HOGAN

‘Will stay with me for a long time’ MARK WATSON

‘Sublime’ BRYONY GORDON

‘A mesmerising debut, capturing everything that’s funny and sad about real life’ DAVID WHITEHOUSE

‘A bold, beautiful undertaking’ POORNA BELL

‘Funny, sad, surreal, life-affirming… I too would like an egg’ KASIM ALI

‘Bizarre, beautiful and like nothing else I’ve ever read’ ANNIE LORD

‘Moving and clever… Although it starts with a death and darkness, it’s a story of hope and embracing newness’ JUSTIN MYERS, THE GUYLINER

‘Joyful, splendidly odd and ultimately profound’ LIZZIE POOK

‘An extraordinary story . . . brimming with magic and – perhaps most importantly – hope’ GLAMOUR

An extraordinary story . . . brimming with magic and – perhaps most importantly – hope

Truly one of the most beautiful stories you’ll ever read, written with generosity and warmth, and such perception. What’s it about? I’d love to have a stab at explaining, but I can’t. You’re just going to have to find out for yourself. I can tell you one thing: it’s a story for anyone who has ever lost somebody, or has ever lost their way

A mad, sad, funny debut

A modern-day fairy tale full of charm, innocence, pain and humour that is deeply satisfying and wonderfully surprising

A mesmerising debut, capturing everything that’s funny and sad about real life

This book is just sublime . . . It will be a crime if millions of people haven’t read it this time next year

A bold, beautiful undertaking that looks at the hurricane of grief distilled and seen through the eyes of a man and an egg. It is at times surprising, comforting, abstract and yet utterly real

Isaac And The Egg

When we meet Isaac he’s not in a good place: he’s intoxicated, dishevelled, and thinking about throwing himself off a bridge. He’s reached the absolute bottom until he hears an unnatural, pained scream that pulls him out of his own pain. The scream, he discovers, has come from an egg which ‘sits resplendent in the middle of a clearing, bathed in a heavenly light which seems to defy the darkness of the night before’.

Isaac has no idea where the egg has come from or what it’s doing there but he’s overcome with the need to protect it, so he bundles it up and takes it home.

What follows are some incredibly strange adventures which reveal the huge amount of pain Isaac is carrying. And while some parts are truly absurd, within Isaac’s world it all seems completely believable because his grief is so consuming and powerful that it feels real that he’s on the verge of despair or insanity.

This is a book that demands to be read in one sitting. Giving yourself wholeheartedly to the story and where it takes you is the best way to feel the real magic Isaac and the Egg has to offer.

If you enjoyed A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness or Grief is the Thing with Feather by Max Porter put this book to the top of your reading pile. It will break your heart and fill it with hope all at the same time.

Reviewed by Anabel Pandiella

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