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

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This is an audiobook 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.

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.

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 great deal of this control is achieved through the novel’s humour which is threaded throughout. Sometimes it’s with the wry, easy smile of a film reference, or the excellently positioned epigraph, but at other times it’s via the perfectly timed punchline, such as that which comes after Isaac and Egg’s shopping trip to town which had me laughing out loud. Make no mistake, this level of calibration - this pitch-perfect tone of the confessional - is HARD to achieve, but when done well it is masterful in its subtlety. 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. Maybe he will finally understand why he went there that morning. Maybe he will find a way to tell the truth.

A tender, funny and surprising meditation on grief and hope . . . like nothing I’ve ever read before’ STYLIST It was utterly charming, which probably sounds like the strangest description of a book about grief you could imagine but it’s true. It captured the tsunami feeling of grief so perfectly and what felt like effortlessly, feeling like you’re spiralling out of control and losing your grip on reality while life carries on for everybody else. Isaac was profoundly relatable and his emotions throughout the book felt so real. 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.Maybe it’s because Isaacs life is (understandably) so dull and boring (despite living with a fluffy egg alien) that it just didn’t captivate me. I found myself getting quite board half way through and really struggled to get through it. Though 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. 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 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. That’s a tough question to ask in such a place because it involves examining what has been lost (desperately painful), what is left (diminished and uncertain) and what might lie ahead (honestly, does anything?) and dragging yourself, with the help, love and support of others, to the beginning of the rest of your life.