Isaac and the Egg, the debut novel by Bobby Palmer, opens with Isaac Addy standing on a bridge at sunrise and considering whether to jump. He can’t recall how he got there though the taste in his mouth suggests he has been drinking. He can see his car at the end of the bridge, with the lights on and the driver’s door still open. Looking at the water below, Isaac lets out a scream of despair, at which “the weir stops bubbling, as if it’s paused to listen. The forest holds its breath. Time seems to stand still. Then, out of nowhere, something screams back.”
Isaac immediately goes in search of the source of the noise. What he finds is not an animal or a human but a living, breathing egg, about two feet tall and “eerily” white, “like a pearl at the centre of the biggest oyster on earth … In his heart, Isaac knows the egg has been abandoned. Like him. He already knows he’s going to take the egg home.”
