At Certain Points We Touch
By Lauren John Joseph

SELECTED FORand STYLIST'S FICTION YOU CAN'T MISS IN 2022 - 'AN ESSENTIAL READ'NAMED AS A BOOK OF 2022 BYand ESQUIRE,and STYLIST,and SHEERLUXEand AND FOYLES'A stone-cold masterpiece by a shocking new talent' OLIVIA LAINGIt's four in the morning, and our narrator is walking home from the club when they realise that it's February 29th - the birthday of the man who was something like their first love. Piecing together art, letters and memory, they set about trying to write the story of a doomed affair that first sparked and burned a decade ago.Ten years earlier, and our young narrator and a boy named Thomas James fall into bed with one another over the summer of their graduation. Their ensuing affair, with its violent, animal intensity and its intoxicating and toxic power play will initiate a dance of repulsion and attraction that will cross years, span continents, drag in countless victims - and culminate in terrible betrayal.At Certain Points We Touchand is a story of first love and last rites, conjured against a vivid backdrop of London, San Francisco and New York - a riotous, razor-sharp coming-of-age story that marks the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.'Lauren John Joseph writes with such wit, glamour, and style! I haven't read a book that so powerfully evokes what it's like to be a wild young artist among other wild young artists since the Bright Young Things' TORREY PETERS, author ofand Detransition, Baby'Lauren's debut novel is so exciting. The writing is so fresh, funny and gripping - and carries the trademark wit that I have always loved from Lauren' TRAVIS ALABANZA'The struggle to find ones place in the world as an artist and lover, creating self and culture as you go along -and At Certain Points We Touchand captures this fleeting, dazzling moment with glamour and heart' MICHELLE TEA