Meet Isobel and Emile. She’s a dark-haired, small-town jeune fille. He’s  the “strange boy from the city” who has temporarily set up shop in the tiny room above the local grocery store to concentrate on his puppetry. Between them there exists an ache, rich in adoration and longing.

When we first encounter them, it’s early morning and the two characters are seated on Emile’s bed, having retrieved the clothes they’d scattered across the floor the night before. Emile is just hours from catching the train that will return him to the city. Their distress at the prospect of parting is palpable: “They looked at each other with their clothes on. They still looked naked. It was their eyes. They were too tender.”

In the big city, Emile settles in with old friends and continues his puppetry, which has expanded to include short films starring his lead puppets, whom he has named Isobel and Emile. The doubling here is evocative, as Emile struggles to find a narrative for his experience.

Back in the town, Isobel lingers. Having run away from home to be with Emile, she is left with nowhere to go but back to his old room, where the “dust reminds her of other things.” She begins working at the grocery store, writes Emile heart-wrenching letters that she never sends, and endeavours to withstand her desolation: “She is here because she does not know where else she could be.”

Reed’s style is intriguing: sentences are taut and clipped, images are crisp, and relentless, intricately rendered repetition fuels the narrative: “She stands in front of the pub. She does not go into the pub. She looks into the pub but she does not go into it.” At times, these elements slow the pace, but because Isobel and Emile are each engaged in a circuitous search for self, Reed’s technique nicely complements the book’s emotional landscape. Ultimately, Isobel & Emile is a poignant study of heartache, isolation, and alienation.