I saw Lauren John Joseph perform at Edinburgh a few years ago, though I was a little way into “At Certain Points We Touch” before I realised its author was the same person. I remember enjoying the performance but finding the narrative hard to follow and not getting a lot of the classical references. This novel also has a lot of classical references (that I had time to look up and therefore enjoy), but a more straightforward narrative that pulled me in. It is a queer love story that you know from the opening has no happy ending. Bibby, our narrator meets Thomas James in London and falls hard for him and it is a credit to the author that you understand the compelling attraction because Thomas is not a great guy by any standards. There are times when you’re thinking “why can’t he love Adam”, the beautiful, “nicer” friend Bibby crashes with when he has nowhere else to go. This aspect is beautifully done by Lauren John Joseph, because, let’s face it, we have all fallen for, or watched others fall for the dickhead who is is no good. The sex is vivid and visceral and is written unflinchingly. The relationship doesn’t last long, but it is in the background wherever Bibby is, in New York or California living as an artist or whatever gets them by. The author writes well about the deep friendships that form from living on the edge but can’t catch you if you fall because everyone is struggling. There are some lovely descriptions of art that Bibby is seeing or thinking about which could be unnecessary digressions but are absolutely fascinating and work as part of the novel. There are thought-provoking moments about the nature of queerness -how is Bibby seen by Thomas James? Has Bibby’s androgyny/trans femininity a place in their gay men’s world, even as Thomas is attracted to them. There is so much in this novel to enjoy and think about that, just writing this, has me planning to reread it.

Love love loved this book, easily my favourite queer novel I’ve read in a while! Astonishing, so unapologetic, playfully referential without ever feeling try-hard, and such a moving portrait of complicated grief.

At Certain Points We Touch reads as though the book itself were unbound and the pages scattered before one on the bed. Thoughts are cast adrift on the page, recreating the way in which memories organically rise and fall, and providing a recognisable structure to an unstructured proccess. The book explores contemporary queer culture, with a trans narrator who is not reduced to a vehicle for her gender-identity, but is, like all people, a collection of attributes and flaws. In all her complexity she traverses queer communities, and the toxic relationship that develops with her dead lover, Thomas James, whom she is remembering as the book unfolds. The ways in which love, lust, and friendship develop in queer groups of millennials is something rarely approached with such insight, though it is admitedly sometimes played out in a bohemian setting that will be unfamiliar to many, queer or not. It is written with great emotional intelligence and Lauren John Joseph's ability to beautifully articulate it. The scenes of sex are explicit, never in the caricatured presentation of some contemporary erotica, where the parties appear to be following stage directions, but in all the messy hormonal rush of attraction.
I hope this book will inspire others to explores trans lives and relationships, and the wider queer community. with such emotional attention. intensity, complexity.

It’s four in the morning, and our narrator, a trans writer living in Mexico City, 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, dirty DMs and memory, they set about trying to write the story of a doomed love affair that first sparked and burned a decade ago.

Ten years earlier, and our young narrator and a boy named Thomas James, long aware of one another across bars and readings and other murky late-night gatherings, fall into bed with one another over the summer of their graduation. Their ensuing affair, with its violent, animal intensity, 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.
Definitely worth a read!

beautifully written, but personally not my cup of tea. It was a lot more sexually explicit than I expected, but just a personal preference!

thank you so much for the privilege of being able to read the ARC

It's 4am in New Mexico and Bibby, a trans writer is walking home from the club when they realise the date.

February 29th. Leap day.

And the birthday of the man who you could call their first love.

Now, almost a decade after they met, the memory of him still haunts Bibby, in their memory, in their heart, in their writing. Their relationship was fiery - passionate, hot, and painful to touch. It burned and sparkled and illuminated their lives. It crossed borders, years, and lines - only really ending when tragedy parted them forever.

They were doomed from the start.

You could say At Certain Points We Touch is a ghost story - but not about things that go bump in the night. About the ghosts of love past, about our former selves and the other things that can haunt us alone in the night.

Told from now and then, this story follows our couple that were destined be together and destined to fail at the same time - their relationship was obsessive, compulsive and almost dangerously toxic at times and even if the reader can't quite understand why they're so desperately in love, the electricity and intoxicating chemistry oozes from the pages.

Our narrator doesn't tell a story as such but weaves their thoughts together until they begin to make sense. They piece together things that have happened in the past, ponder and reflect on their journey to the present day - almost like a poetic fever dream.

A touching and poignant story about the magnitude of first love, the innocence of young dreams and the experience of growing up as a queer person - At Certain Points We Touch is a masterfully crafted introspection into the significant moments in our lives.

Ooh, I found this disappointing. I'm pleased to see that others enjoyed it but I found this almost impossible to engage with. There was no narrative drive to speak of - the story just seemed an interminable stream of pages with no ebb or flow or discernible structure - and the central axis (that two people who had no common ground whatsoever but some kind of intoxicating sexual chemistry in a brief open relationship for a couple of months) had no believability whatsoever.

I found the author unable to covey why this particular man was so addictive to the central character, which kind of undermined the story as it just wasn't believable.

HOWEVER. I can see that the writer is talented with a keen eye (hand?) for fresh contemporary observation and an impressive and intriguing lean towards showcasing bohemian life and centring those who are often overlooked in mainstream literature. particular scenes, such as a Barbra Streisand act whilst high on Vicodin - were fun and well observed but like I say, the individual passages could not add up to a cohesive whole.

This is an extraordinary novel at different points tender beautiful and heartbreaking yet also raw visceral and frankly some of the most uninhibited sensual sex scenes I’ve read
The book written from the point of view of a transsexual woman looks at how a past relationship continues to completely define us long after it is over and in this case after the lover’s death .
The book flits between now and then effortlessly and I always understood when a particular section was set
The narrator moves between different countries during the story and lives in London New York and San Francisco and the book is rich from these differences .I felt the London sections were the most atmospheric as the characters inhabit after dark bars clubs and reviews that are so real that I’m certain the author themselves is very familiar with these places .They are described in a direct way that does not disguise their shoddy sometimes seedy character and it is this that makes them so real.
I’ve not read a lot of queer/LGBT literature and found I learned a lot about the culture reading this book I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting the sex scenes to be as graphic and feel this could be hinted at stronger in the book’s blurb ,I didn’t find them uncomfortable but othe

This was an enjoyable and engaging novel which took an interesting approach to a story of lost love. I was drawn to this book by the queer themes and I enjoyed the way queer culture was referenced. From the very beginning you know that the book is building towards the death of Thomas James, and the way this was written and explored really gave you an insight into the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings.

Whilst I liked the writing style, at times I found it a bit too clunky and rambling, which I felt slowed the pace of the story. However, this didn’t prevent me from enjoying the novel.

(A pronoun clarity note: I’ll be using she/her for the protagonist, they/them for the author)

In one of those “queer circles are too small” moments, it turns out I’m actually reasonably familiar with the work of this author, having seen them in performance several times over the years. But I didn’t actually connect their name with their previous stage name because I’m an idiot.

I do like to think, however, I’d have recognised the voice. Because there is something about Lauren John Joseph that has always resonated with me: a combination of superficial similarities—like being born in the north and (over)educated in the south—coupled with their profound capacity to articulate queerness, a sense of queerness, that feels both specific and universal.

In any case, At Certain Points We Touch is no exception. But is also one of *those* books: the queer story as old as time where the narrator, rootless, adrift in memory and untethered in time, slowly unwinds for the semi-voyeuristic, semi-empathetic reader a doomed love story. A doomed loved story with a total prick. Because it’s always a total prick. You cannot have a proper DLS in a queer context unless the guy is a total prick.

And I think I must be getting old, or I’ve read that story too often, because my patience for it is not so much worn thin as entirely dissolved. Also, I’m coming to the conclusion it might be borderline impossible to tell because how do you make this person—this powerfully charismatic total prick—as enthralling to the reader as they are to the narrator? The problem is, charisma, especially toxic charisma, is always going to be an abstract thing. And without it, you just get the quite long-winded tale of a terrible person who you’re literally waiting to die.

All of which was to say, the emotional heart of this novel I understood more than I felt. I didn’t blame the heroine for her terrible taste in men, but I felt I zero connection to either the terrible Thomas James or the less-terrible Adam who provide the corners of this nasty little love triangle. And, of course, maybe that was the point: this is, after all, a story Bibby is narrating and better for it to be about her than the two basic cis men in her life, but I think with them never feeling quite real, it impacted the realness of Bibby too.

But, then, that could very well have been deliberate. In a story about a dead man, everyone becomes a ghost, and the title of the book does reflect its self-conscious ephemerality. It’s a novel of moments and of memory, the ultimate unreliability of both, and the pain of incomplete connection: whether that’s because of gender, or class, or geography, or, y’know, actual death.

And now this sounds really negative just because I can’t be arsed with toxic gay boys imbued with fictional glamour but … err … I actually really loved this. The writing is gloriously unabashed, skimming effortlessly from the esoteric to the ribald, from the poetic to the pragmatic, though you kind of have also accept it’s as extra as fuck. From the millennial club scene, to philosophy, to religion, to history, and popular culture this a book that hasn’t met a reference it doesn’t want to squeeze in somewhere. And despite its loose chronology and somewhat distant-feeling characters, the book has amazing sense of place and time.

As well as some incredible moments of emotional clarity on the part of the narrator that speak so broadly and movingly to the nature of queerness itself:

“there in the gallery, i think i finally began to understand that you and Adam really were just what you said you were, just two gay men, just two guys who have sex with guys, that’s all. i had thought that your predilection of for transfemmes and androgynes would serve me well, keep me safe, but in reality you didn’t ever consider any of us as serious candidates, did you? there was no place for us in this mirror world. my own incongruous physicality, flat chest, long hair, the feminine dominance i possessed marked me as an intruder in this uncomplicated universe…”

I found this so fascinating and so powerfully articulated: the often unacknowledged division between those in our community for whom complicated queerness is as incomprehensible as its opposite is to others.
It is moments of such as these that make this book for me. They more than compensate for sections when the pacing lags, the faint sense of awkwardness of essentially hanging around in a narrative waiting for a character to die, the times when the writing buckles under its own ambitions and falls apart. It’s a dazzling and deeply queer debut from a frankly infuriatingly talented person. This is going to sound disgustingly glib but the fact is … at certain points this novel touched me. And that, in itself, was significant enough that the rest didn’t matter. I should get at least a 7 at GCSE for English for an observation like that.

There's lots to love about this finger-on-the-pulse queer millennial tale with its hipster vibe, its cast of youthful models, artists, writers, and its angsty first love story.

But something about the writing felt a bit forced and laboured to me: 'heaving your gangly build, unwieldy as a bicycle frame, up on a makeshift stage', 'you were like a found photograph, black and white, black and white, of a little boy, bundled onto the Kindertransport by his desperate mother', 'you sealed the cave [i.e. the bedroom] by dragging another piece of plywood over the abyss, like the rock rolled over Christ's tomb' - this is personal taste but I'd have pencilled through all those clumsy similes, as well as the gratuitous and rather tasteless Holocaust reference.

Stylistic niggles aside, though, this is a hip and cool take on the lost love narrative - and what a great cover!

I was attracted to this book because of the queer (LGBT) themes- it’s rare that a book with a trans (or otherwise queer) protagonist is released, even rarer that it’s done well. Bibby isn’t always likeable but they are frank and entertaining. The Queer Culture referenced in the book is done so well- in a modern way but in a way that reminds me of Stoner (although I couldn’t get through that).

Bibby (who grew up working class in Liverpool but who has some Americanisms in the way they write/speak throughout which was jarring) has a short lived, toxic lust-affair with Thomas James who the book is spoke to, after his too-soon and tragic death. Thomas James is also not very likeable throughout. There is a whole host of characters who crop up and that can become confusing (but worth it).

The sex scenes in this book were unexpected and will have people blushing if reading out in public.

The two things I couldn’t get on with were 1) the length (there were some sections that felt like ‘filler’ and slowed the pace of the book) and 2) the lack of capital letters after a full stop. I also wasn’t that sure how Bibby had actually ended up in Mexico City (but maybe I missed that).

I found that I couldn’t put this book down- even when I wanted to because I’d become so cross and frustrated at Bobby’s lack of focus or a plan. I enjoyed it and I hope the queer themes don’t pigeon hole it. It deserves to be a success.

Extremely profound and heartfelt, this novel felt totally unique, but completely absorbing and even comforting at the same time. Let finding an old friend.

At Certain Points We Touch is a novel about remembering the past, doomed love, and a millennial stumble through friendship and cities, as a writer tries to tell the story of their dead lover. A trans writer living in Mexico realises that it is the anniversary of the death of a man they loved, and starts to write the story of them, together and apart, and the messy, toxic, desperate affair they had.

This is a masterful novel, sharp and clever, that explores how we tell stories and what millennial queer life is like, almost haunted by the ghosts of previous queer culture in London, San Francisco, and New York. At times it feels like an older novel, but then it throws in modern references and muses on the longevity of digital culture, and you remember that this is recent. In fact, the parts about digital preservation were some of my favourite bits of writing in the book, musing on how a MySpace profile could endure if civilisations couldn't.

You know from the start that it is building towards Thomas James' death, and you really understand how the narrator wants to hold off getting there and telling a death they weren't there for as much as they want to unfold the story. The book is also a knowing wink towards writing and autofiction, considering what is memory and story even when something is meant to be 'what happened', but this is combined with exploits and community and stumbling into things whilst young in ways that stop it just feeling like a book about writing a book.

With an almost haunting sense of the recent past and grief, At Certain Points We Touch is a novel that really paints a portrait, not just of the narrator's lover, but of the narrator themselves, of cities and bad rooms, and of growing up as a millennial and traversing different kinds of culture and community.

At Certain Points We Touch, by Lauren John Joseph is an exceptional debut. The power, depth and scope of this novel is quite astounding. John Joseph begins their story at the end, with the acknowledgment of the death of the narrators once lover; and so begins their attempt at retelling the story of their youth, the friendships, the lovers, the cities they lived in, the dizzying highs and the deep lows and then, ultimately, the loss that underscores this whole tale.

At one point in the novel the narrator admits that the book they thought they were writing was in fact somehow writing them. Though they were writing with the intent of bringing to life once again the man they had lost, in the process of doing so we learn so much about the narrator, as do they about themselves. The awareness that John Joseph allows the narrator to have, as they sit there looking back creates such an exceptional story that you feel as though you are living it with them.

The depth and detail that John Joseph writes is really something special. You may at one point be reading about the lives of the narrator and their contemporaries and then swiftly are moved on to their thoughts on excavation of ancient Tenochtitlan whilst they are living in Mexico City. This, however, is never forced or distracting, and only ever seems to add to the richness of this vast tale. John Joesph’s skill of weaving in a combination of popular culture, religion and history (both recent in their own lifetime and ancient), into the narrators own story is exceptional. Additionally, I’ve never read a novel that has its finger so on the pulse of what it means, and even what it feels like, to be a millennial.

There was a conversation that the narrator has with their mother that really stood out to me. When apologising to their mother for the content or a play they’d written, the narrator explains to their mother that this was how it was, but their mother replied that no, it was how they remembered it. There was so much power in what being said here. How this story is one of trying to bring someone back to life, but in doing so, in remembering events from their past, they recognise things change, whether it’s their view of themselves or indeed of others, things can never stay the same.

There is so much on this book that can be dissected, that cries out to be discussed with others. I can’t wait until it’s published, for others to experience this novel and to be able to discuss it with them. Lauren John Joseph is a very exciting talent and one that I can’t wait to see what they do next.