It’s Hard To Be An Animal – Book Launch!

Join us on Tuesday, May 19 from 6:00-8:00 PM at Boris & Horton in celebrating Pushcart Prize winner Robert Isaacs as he presents his debut novel, It’s Hard to be an Animal!

​In this funny, magical, and tender novel, we follow a lonely and conflict-averse man whose sudden ability to understand animals sends him on a wild romp around NYC, and ultimately helps him discover his own voice. Isaacs will read from and discuss the novel with fellow acclaimed author and editor Anna Montague (How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?), followed by an audience Q&A and signing. Event will be held on the dog side of the café; $5 entrance fee applies. All pups are welcome! Books will be available for purchase from P&T Knitwear. 🐶

​About the Book:

​Strolling through Central Park on a blind date with the hilarious, irrepressible Molly Bent, Henry Parsons is feeling hopeful for the first time in years … when a migratory warbler, the sweetest of little birds, tells him to f*** off.

​A gentle soul, troubled enough by the unkindness of fellow humans, Henry tries to brush the moment aside as a hallucination. But soon he’s hearing voices everywhere: dogs mocking their owners, sparrows fat-shaming each other, police horses profiling attendees at a street fair — even a pontificating, misogynistic snake.

​The man who never speaks up for himself is now besieged by animals who do. When (inevitably) he overhears three rats discussing a corpse in the New York subway, he lets it slip to Molly. She’s keen to investigate, and Henry’s desperate for a second date, so he follows her nervously into an abandoned tunnel under the West Fourth Street Station. There, sure enough, they find a body … and the murderers find them. Cue the most terrifying week of this cautious man’s life.

​Inspiration and courage arrive from a pair of feuding betta fish and his neighbor’s yapping (but deceptively sweet) Pomeranian — whose unexpected wisdom helps Henry find the courage to assert himself at last.

​About the Authors:

​Robert Isaacs has survived an eventful life. He has escaped an angry hippo in the Okavango Delta, dodged tear gas on the Mount of Olives, roasted marshmallows over cooling lava in the Guatemalan highlands, and been run over by a boat off the west coast of Australia. In his youth he supported himself as a juggler and unicyclist on the streets of San Francisco before turning to music; over the course of thirty years he conducted everywhere from Carnegie Hall to the Cook Islands, released a dozen CDs, and earned a Grammy nomination. It’s Hard to Be an Animal is his first novel.

​Anna Montague is the author of How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? and a senior editor of nonfiction at Henry Holt & Co. She lives in Brooklyn.