The Rover praises Isobel and Emile's 'irresistible beauty'

'In his novel, Isobel and Emile, Alan Reed upends the old narrative to create “a story about what comes after a love story.” His sparse prose tugs the reader into two lives forced apart. It fills the pages with an immediacy and irresistible beauty that never flags. In a relentless rhythm of staccato sentences, Reed’s novel plumbs the depth of malaise that radical self-reinvention may create. At once moving and strange, it presents not the heroes of a love story, but the casualties ...

The heartbreak is subtle yet deeply felt. Taken individually, the thousands of minute actions Reed describes may appear mundane, but as they collect and merge, their aggregate effect creates a story with immense emotional depth. The characters’ pain sneaks up on you and gets under your skin ...

The novel is best when the reader lets the prose wash over him. The style takes over, and reading it becomes hugely enjoyable ... Isobel and Emile is a truly unique, compelling, and engrossing book that lingers in the reader’s mind long after the final pages. Reed brings into glaring focus the implications inherent in the love stories on which we so often rely to give our relationships meaning. In doing so, he helps us understand what “being together” can really mean.'