I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. This was a beautiful and unique book, a story of a marriage told in reverse. When it starts, Jules and Alice are in their 80s. But as the book goes on you learn of the struggles they had, the affairs, historical events they endured, good times, children, the fights, all the way to when they first started. This book was magical in the way it makes us as the reader look at life in this way. I found myself reflecting on things I may think are tough in my life but then remember how and why they started and became a part of my life. This is a relatable book for me and probably for everyone who reads it. I was swept away by the realistic marriage of this couple.

I got this ARC from Netgalley and all I can say is that the story is beautifully heartbreaking in so many ways. You can relate to Jules and Alice and their story and how, eventually, we’ll experience the same things they did.
10/10 would recommend

To be published in October 2025, this slim, sharp, novel tracks the stately maelstrom of Alice and Jules’ marriage with a forensic eye.

The story is told in reverse chronological order, so we meet the couple first in their late 80s, estranged by illness and time. Their history unfolds through the tumult of time, world events, and crises in their native France, all the way back to the days when they dazzled and consumed each other.

We find Alice to be introverted, but loving and capable, increasingly aware that she’s being overlooked, and Jules politically progressive, and outwardly committed, but with a fatal blind spot when it comes to the emotional and domestic labour that underpins their life.

Chiming with my recent read of @ellie_levenson’s smart Room 706, we find a marriage assailed by a steady crescendo of unspoken resentments: who does the school run, the laundry, the emotional patchwork that holds the household together? Abécassis writes with a cool clarity and wry humour, capturing the alarming dichotomy of being deeply loved in theory, while fading into the background in practice.

What struck me was the book’s empathy for both: Jules isn’t villainised, but shown as someone trapped by inertia and blind to his own assumptions. And Alice—still respectful of the life they’ve built—begins to feel the stirring of something more, something quieter than rebellion, but no less profound.

This isn’t an attack on marriage, but a delicate study of how love buckles under the weight of routine, expectation, and the suspicion - despite all the love and goodness in a life - that one has missed out on something, and been untrue to one’s sense of self. And when two people have been so close, so enmeshed and blended, for so many years, whose history is whose?

A Couple is brief but beautifully sharp, offering up the honest ache of wanting more without losing what matters. It’s a small book that knows exactly how to linger.

Such an interesting narrative structure! Also so much interesting work done in such a small amount of time. I think the story and impact is definitely going to linger in my brain for a while, it packs a punch!

We find Alice an Jules in the late stages of life at the beginning in the novel. They have been a couple for decades and their love story is told in reverse. Highly original and deeply emotional.

Oh how betrayed I felt. How I was rooting for them and how little by little it showed me how horrible they were. Like I cried at first and at the end I was so pissed at them. It would have been a 5 but I felt the prose a little clunky, but I felt maybe it was the translation. In general I loved it even though I was angry at the end.

📚A Couple
✍🏻Eliette Abécassis
Blurb:
Told in reverse chronology, this novel follows Alice and Jules, who are eighty-five years old. They meet on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. Children are playing by the pool, a ray of sunshine breaks through the leaves of the trees. Is it déjà vu? Because what they now risk forgetting, and what began sixty years ago, started their life together. Step by step, from the end to the beginning. Age, routine, affairs, jealousy, becoming parents, marriage, the two of them experienced all of this against the backdrop of Paris and the major historical upheavals of the last decades. This hopeful and tender book asks how love can endure and what holds us together.
My Thoughts:
This story was a ride. A short book that packs such an emotional punch. I cried, laughed, was infuriated; felt all the emotions with the characters. So well written. Beautiful prose. Eliette Abecassis's A Couple takes us back through the years, showing the relationship between Alice and Jules as it finishes toward the end of their lives, and revealing one step back at a time how their relationship evolved to this state. We see how Alice missed all the signals from the very beginning.
We find Alice to be introverted, but loving and capable, increasingly aware that she’s being overlooked, and Jules politically progressive, and outwardly committed, but with a fatal blind spot when it comes to the emotional and domestic labour that underpins their life.This isn’t an attack on marriage, but a delicate study of how love buckles under the weight of routine, expectation, and the suspicion - despite all the love and goodness in a life - that one has missed out on something, and been untrue to one’s sense of self. And when two people have been so close, so enmeshed and blended, for so many years, whose history
Thanks NetGalley, Grand Books and Author Eliette Abécassis for the advanced copy of "A Couple" I am leaving my voluntary review in appreciation.
#NetGalley
#GrandBooks
#ElietteAbecassis
#ACouple
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This novel absolutely swept me away. Told backward through time, it follows Alice and Jules—an elderly couple sitting together on a park bench in Paris—unraveling their shared life, moment by moment, until we reach the day they first met.

It’s such a unique and tender way to explore love: not as something that begins in a spark, but as something you unwind, memory by memory, until you find the pure beginning again. Through age, jealousy, parenting, mistakes, forgiveness, and joy, the story captures the quiet ache of what it means to spend a lifetime with someone—and then slowly forget.

The writing feels cinematic and deeply human. Paris isn’t just a backdrop—it’s the novel's heartbeat, echoing their decades of change through art, war, politics, and personal transformation.

A moving meditation on memory, love, and the small moments that hold a lifetime together. Perfect for book clubs, and even better for reading with a cup of coffee on a quiet morning.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

When thinking about your great loves - you always remember the beginning and all of the good stuff. A Couple by Eliette Abecassis is a love story, at the end, working it's way back to the beginning. The good and the bad. The times of deep passion and the times of infidelity.

This is an interesting way to tell the story, and I can see how some may not like it. It shows everything, the good and bad, the sweet and the sour. I think that brings a realness to the story, because life is a mix of everything.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Beautiful, compassionate and searingly real - A Couple is a heart-rending and unforgettable chronicle of a life shared. The translation is excellent, the writing deft and wise. I was totally bowled over by Abecassis' capacity to interweave grandiose observations of time and change with the unspoken intimacy of enduring love and companionship. A real treasure.

You know that feeling when you pick up a book, thinking, 'This sounds nice,' and then it absolutely floors you? That was A Couple for me.

Told in reverse chronology, a clever and emotional storytelling choice, this novel follows Alice and Jules, starting when they're 85, sitting on a park bench in Paris, and tracing their relationship all the way back to when they first met. It's not a lighthearted love story. It digs deep into the realities of marriage: infidelity, parenthood, resentment, routine, care, distance, and all the silent, invisible threads that hold two people together (or pull them apart) over a lifetime.

What I loved is how real it felt. It captured those moments in a long-term relationship that most of us either go through or worry we might. Not just the big emotional blowouts, but the quiet erosion that happens through years of misunderstanding, unmet needs, or just plain life. The roles of caregiver and partner blur, and identity gets lost in the day-to-day; yet, despite all that, there's still tenderness and hope.

I found Alice especially compelling. Her internal struggle between love and duty, who she was and who she wanted to be, hit her hard. And Jules, too, with his moments of reflection and regret, felt so human. The book doesn't judge either of them. It just lays their story out with honesty and compassion.

It's not overly long, and it's beautifully translated from the French, but it packs a punch. It's not trying to be poetic or flowery; it's just raw, emotional, and honest.

This isn't a book that gives you straightforward answers about love or marriage. However, it does pose fundamental questions about how we connect, drift, stay, or sometimes wish to leave. I genuinely loved it.

Thank you, NetGalley and Arctis Books, for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thankyou for this ARC.

This story was a ride. A short book that packs such an emotional punch. I was hooked and couldn't put it down. I cried, laughed, was infuriated, feeling all the emotions with the characters. So well written. Beautiful prose.
Such an interesting structure of story telling that worked so well - starting at the end and working backwards. I loved picking up on the hints and details. Finding out the significance of objects and situations after always seeing how it ends. I thought this was very well done and I'll be picking up a copy when it's released.

A beautiful and poetic account of a couple's enduring relationship over 60 years, through initial heady romance to old age, taking in the birth of children, changing circumstances, affairs and counselling along the way. It illustrates the power of love, which triumphs even after the relationship appears to have broken down. Bittersweet and poignant.