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Start giftingAt Certain Points We Touch
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBloomsbury presents At Certain Points We Touch written and read by Lauren John Joseph.
SELECTED FOR STYLIST'S FICTION YOU CAN'T MISS IN 2022 – 'AN ESSENTIAL READ'
NAMED AS A BOOK OF 2022 BY ESQUIRE, STYLIST, SHEERLUXE AND FOYLES
'A stone-cold masterpiece by a shocking new talent' OLIVIA LAING
'Pure delight ... A queer romance novel like no other' TATLER
It’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 Touch 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 of Detransition, Baby
'Screamingly funny, scandalously hot, opulent, deep – a devastating torch song of obsession and excess' JEREMY ATHERTON LIN, author of Gay Bar
'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 – At Certain Points We Touch captures this fleeting, dazzling moment with glamour and heart' MICHELLE TEA
Lauren John Joseph (formerly La JohnJoseph) is a British born American-educated artist and writer, who works at the intersection of video, text, and live performance.
They have written extensively on contemporary culture, art, performance, pornography, gender theory and the Golden Age of Hollywood, contributing in print and online to publications including iD, The Independent, Sleek, The Guardian, Time Out, Attitude, Amuse, Siegessäule, Parterre de Rois, Charleston Press, and the ‘zines Birdsong, Fat Zine, 21st Century Queer Artists Identify Themselves, and Not Here: An Anthology of Queer Loneliness. They have also authored the experimental prose work Everything Must Go (ITNA Press in 2014), and the plays, A Generous Lover and Boy in a Dress, which were published by Oberon in 2019.
They have presented performances at the Royal Opera House; Deutsche Oper; Bristol Old Vic; Barbican; Schaubühne; Art Basel Hong Kong; SF MoMA; Dixon Place, NY; Martin-Gropius Bau; Fancy Him, Tokyo; La Java, Paris; and Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói. Their fine artwork has been shown in group exhibitions in the UK, US, Germany and Mexico.
Lauren John Joseph (formerly La JohnJoseph) is a British born American-educated artist and writer, who works at the intersection of video, text, and live performance.
They have written extensively on contemporary culture, art, performance, pornography, gender theory and the Golden Age of Hollywood, contributing in print and online to publications including iD, The Independent, Sleek, The Guardian, Time Out, Attitude, Amuse, Siegessäule, Parterre de Rois, Charleston Press, and the ‘zines Birdsong, Fat Zine, 21st Century Queer Artists Identify Themselves, and Not Here: An Anthology of Queer Loneliness. They have also authored the experimental prose work Everything Must Go (ITNA Press in 2014), and the plays, A Generous Lover and Boy in a Dress, which were published by Oberon in 2019.
They have presented performances at the Royal Opera House; Deutsche Oper; Bristol Old Vic; Barbican; Schaubühne; Art Basel Hong Kong; SF MoMA; Dixon Place, NY; Martin-Gropius Bau; Fancy Him, Tokyo; La Java, Paris; and Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói. Their fine artwork has been shown in group exhibitions in the UK, US, Germany and Mexico.