Isaac and the Egg: the unique, funny and heartbreaking Saturday Times bestseller

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This is such an unusual, emotional and beautiful story, and quite a difficult one to describe, as it not like anything I’ve read before. It is told from the perspective of Isaac, a man whose life has unravelled following the death of his wife Mary. He doesn’t want to grieve, because to do so would be to accept her loss. So he spends his days not thinking, watching familiar films and avoiding the outside world, including the family and friends who want to help him. He eats, he sleeps and makes it through each day with the support of his sister, neighbours and his therapist while the events leading to Isaac's present state are revealed to the reader as Isaac is able to cope with them.

I wanted to sit and talk about this wonderful creation while I was absorbing it, because that's what it does, Bobby Palmers narrative will seep into your very pores. You will want to share every last paragraph of this multilayered triumph, while at the same time wanting to stay quiet, to understand what others make of it, wonder whether you share the same thoughts. My advice is to read it with people, many people, experience it with company. A grieving Isaac and his curious new friend are unlikely companions. They don’t even speak the same language. But their chance encounter will transform Isaac’s life in ways he cannot yet imagine. No-one escapes grief and heartbreak and everyones journey through it will be different. Despite this story dealing with grief, it is wonderfully hopeful, charming and even funny at times. Among the stupidest books I’ve read in a long time. Maybe I’m being harsh and it just wasn’t for me. I finished it out of spite. Got slightly better. But cheesy and badly written the entire way through. Great book if it were marketed for 8-10 year olds, I mean that in all sincerity not as an insult. If an egg falls in the woods, will it kill Isaac Addy? If Isaac Addy dies in the woods, will his misery die with him?’Story Synopsis: (Don’t want to reveal much, so just giving the barest of outlines. But the story is a lot more than this.) I imagine the portrayal of the characters by the narrator is exactly how the author intended. Johnny Flynn has a soothing, but engaging voice – absolutely perfect for such a touching, tender story. I even wonder would I have enjoyed the book quite so much had I read it myself. I will never know because I can’t unhear it, I’ve been spoilt and if all narrators were this good, I’d maybe never read a book myself again.

A grieving Isaac and his curious new friend are unlikely companions. They don't even speak the same language. But their chance encounter will transform Isaac's life in ways he cannot yet imagine. If you are an inveterate reader, the odds are good, better than good actually, that fellow readers or close friends (sometimes, happily, they are both) that at some point they will recommend a book to you. A book, they will assure you with a mix of solemnity and enthusiasm, is Continue ReadingThough most of the plot is very intense because of grief and mental breakdowns being the prime focus, there are still some light scenes and humorous banter between Isaac and Egg. These are really well-done and don’t feel out-of-place despite the dreary theme.

One of the most enduring images from Jurassic Park is of the baby velociraptor first breaking out of its shell. Later, those same velociraptors will be the scariest thing about the film – but for now, they’re something small, adorable, and in need of protection. Isaac and the Egg has taken me completely surprise.. Started out not knowing what I was reading and if I was going to fully engage with the story but ohh my.. Measured, comic and moving… A sad, funny and original novel about grief, loss and embracing change’ DAILY MAILIsaac Addy is a man bereft, not just of his wife Mary, who has died, but of his selfhood. A scatty children’s book illustrator who had “always thought his biggest fear was people not liking him”, he is now aimless, bedraggled and literally about to jump off a bridge into the abyss when he hears a scream that leads him to a creature that looks startlingly like an egg and, “for the first time in weeks, feels an emotion that isn’t despair”. So, what do you do when you read (and listen) to a book that you want the whole world to read, but you don't want to tell them too much about it, because this book is one of the most personal books that I have come across in a long time and it is a book that is best started with absolutely no preconceived ideas. That is until he walks into the woods one day on what is undoubtedly the worst day of a life that doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to get any better, and finds his existential scream of neverending pain answered by something that sounds as lost as he is. As Isaac comes to grips with what he finds in the forest, and as a result with the lost state of a life brought to ruin by grief, he has to ask himself what it is he wants from it going forward.

If that sounds like a lot, it is, and for all its magicality and whimsy and sheer endearing funniness at times, Isaac and the Egg doesn’t attempt, not once, to sugarcoat how utterly hard that whole journey is, and how even if something happens to you to begin reshaping things, which it most certainly does to Isaac Addy, that it’s not some overnight fix.

This review is for the audio version of the novel, I found the audio version made a great bedtime story, the narrators tone, pitch and pace matched the story perfect. I found the 30-40mins chapters just the right amount for a chapter before bed, with the excellent voices done by the narrator I felt I got a sense of how Iscca as feeling and I loved the sarcasm at times and the way the narrator conveyed this. This story made a great audiobook and I suspect it would be equally as great in print. In a series of scenes that intentionally bring to mind seminal moments from ET, Isaac takes the egg – is it an alien? Some sort of beast? – home, where it becomes a fluffy, yolk-faced lodger, and Isaac’s salvation, as he considers, eventually, how to help it return home.