Hayes, a master of psychological prose, seems to have cherished few illusions. The fictional world of In Love…is one of brief pleasures and bleak self-knowledge, of discoveries nearly made or made too late…His authorial gaze is so penetrating that it’s practically carcinogenic: you get the feeling that it could, while revealing someone’s insides, disassemble atoms, mutate cells—the illumination of pain leaving scars of its own.
—Brian Patrick Eha, City Journal
One of the greatest, bleakest breakup stories ever told.
—The New York Observer
Like Raymond Carver at his best, novelist-cum-screenwriter Alfred Hayes addresses the human condition and its heartbreaks with brevity and brutal honesty. In Love was Hayes's fourth novel, and as the story unfolds, there is a dreadful sense that the middle-aged protagonist is heading for disaster by falling in love with a younger girl who "inhabits a world from which he is excluded." When a rival appears, in the shape of a millionaire with an indecent proposal, the cynicism and misery of the situation become almost unbearable.
—The Guardian
I've rarely seen the breakdown of a relationship, in all its banality and pettiness, evoked more vividly. It's tough, fresh, very lovely, and will stay with you.
—Sadie O. Stein, The Paris Review Daily
A fever chart of an affair records all the fluctuations of feelings which are intimate and intense, expectant and often disabused, cruel and vulnerable, and brings to the heat of passion a cooler scrutiny which comes with its conclusion.... A tour de force.
—Kirkus Reviews
Maybe the old canard that the best love letters are those written when we are out of love goes for the novel too. If so, Alfred Hayes has written a smashing success. In this, his latest novel, he examines some of the states of mind, body, and soul which accompany love, without falling for all that nonsense about affection, intimacy, trust and all the simple pleasures known to people less sophisticated than the characters in his book.
—The New York Times
[A] noirish masterpiece which combines a plot that prefigures Indecent Proposal with the desolate milieu of an Edward Hopper painting.
—The Guardian
In Love is strange, unsettling, cynical and sad. It is a masterpiece. But if you are in love and want to believe, then don't read it.
—The Times (London)
This is a marvelously well wrought novel; there are not many current books so completely finished in terms of verbal felicities.
—Chicago Tribune
A little masterpiece.
—Elizabeth Bowen
Besides being a technical tour de force, In Love is literature; it is a work of art.
—Julian Maclaren-Ross, The Sunday Times
Quite the best he has written.
—The Times Literary Supplement
Moving and convincing ... a lyrical, intelligent book.
—The Guardian
Hayes has done for bruised men what Jean Rhys does for bruised women, and they both write heartbreakingly beautiful sentences.
—Paul Bailey, The Guardian
A very remarkable novel; altogether outstanding in the unwavering concentration with which it pursues the problem of the reality of love. The story is stripped down to its bare essentials.... Quite unforgettable.
—John Lehmann, BBC
