However I just couldn’t get into it. I stopped and started it a couple of times but I just found the storyline and the concept of the egg really silly. I was completely mesmerised by Isaac's emotionally charged story - we first meet Isaac where he is contemplating ending his own life, when he is distracted by a scream in the forest. He follows the sound and finds a magical, almost super-real, enormous egg in the middle of a clearing, with no clue as to where it came from or who made it. I have avoided the recent trend of books about grief and have issues with audio so this was another choice that perplexed me in hindsight – that was until I started listening. To even give away a hint of the astoundingly imaginative narrative of Isaac and the Egg would be to ruin the journey into its gloriously soul excoriating wonders but suffice to say, Palmer has crafted what feels like almost all the time you’re reading it, like the definitive guide to what grief feels like. Dit is een emotioneel, krachtig, kwetsbaar, verfrissend, verrassend en uniek verhaal over liefde, vriendschap, rouw, mentale gezondheid, geheimen, verbinding, hoop en de kleine dingen die het leven zo waardevol maken. Zodra het verhaal je grijpt laat het je niet meer los, het bezorgt je kippenvel, laat je glimlachen en is zeker het lezen waard!

I loved this book, once I got into it! I couldn’t sworn out initially whether this was a YA book or not (I do read both). However, the more I read I realised that this book could help people of all ages and it doesn’t matter what genre it has been classed as!! The book starts with Isaac seemingly finding Egg in the forest and taking him home. What follows is Isaac bonding with Egg and dealing with his own emotions along the way. This is quite a difficult book to review without giving any spoilers but to explain it all would take away the beauty of the book. courtesy IMP Awards) Creative inspiration can come from all kinds of strange, beautiful and unexpected places – a waterfall at sunset, a colourfully-dressed woman on a train at peak hour or a snippet of history, long forgotten but dredged up to fill a social media post with a fascinating factoid. Continue Reading

Customer reviews

Isaac 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”. An arresting debut novel about grief, but in the most wonderfully oblique way’ REVEREND RICHARD COLES An arresting debut novel about grief, but in the most wonderfully oblique way’ Reverend Richard Coles

Isaac's emotional distress is expressed through the quiet as he struggles to live through his grief, shunning all company except that of Egg. Caster Semenya’s The Race to Be Myself made me gasp 31 October, 2023 Fantasy books used to bore me - my kids changed my mind 30 October, 2023 Opinion | Jilly Cooper will never be too old to write sex scenes 27 October, 2023 It's a tale that might seem familiar. But how it speaks to you will depend on how you've lived until now. I won’t say any more about it, other than we’re able to share Isaac’s life with Egg, and believe me, what a roller coaster it is, from Isaac’s descent into mental breakdown, to his amusing and touching moments as he and Egg try to create a relationship as friends and lodgers.The two are unlikely companions. But their chance encounter will transform Isaac’s life in ways he cannot yet imagine.

First a confession; the love of my life died very recently so this book brought me to tears so very many times. But it also made me snort with laughter. Survival against impossible extraterrestrial odds: Invasion ends its second season with hope … and not? (S2, E6-10) I'd been hearing so many wonderful things about this book, the book with the egg, the debut that has everybody talking and ok WOW, I get it: what a special little book this is!

Christmas Gifts

Perhaps that’s what scares us, but also intrigues us, about eggs. It’s definitely why I chose an egg as the perfect companion to Isaac, a man who might just be something of an egg himself.