Broken Pencil reviews Isobel and Emile

'In the opening pages of Isobel and Emile, poet Alan Reed's debut novel, the eponymous characters wake up, get dressed and go to the train station. While Emile hops on a train, Isobel stays behind, assuming squatter's rights over her now ex-lover's apartment and the menial grocery store job he left behind ...

Consider this, one of the many scenes in which an aimless Isobel feels trapped in Emile's old apartment: 'Her dress is on the floor by the bed. She bends down. She picks it up. She puts it on the bed. She looks at her dress lying on the bed.'

Here, as elsewhere, Reed strives to make the subtle act grand, training his lens on the mundane in an effort to capture it from every angle ... Isobel and Emile manages to accomplish something quite impressive, pairing a story of two estranged lovers stuck in a rut with a strangely hypnotic, and ultimately complimentary, writing style. That combination means you'll either find Isobel and Emile ... repetitive ... or the rarest of things: a thoughtful, poetic synchronicity between content and form.

Pitched as 'a story of what happens after a love story,' Reed's elegiac debut novel is for contemplative readers who don't mind walking in circles, provided the view is nice.'