Intermezzo: Sally Rooney

I love love loved both ‘Normal People‘ and ‘Conversations with Friends‘ but didn’t get on all that well with ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You‘ so was a little apprehensive going into Sally Rooney’s latest novel, ‘Intermezzo’. I needn’t have worried, because oh my goodness, I loved it! I read this book a few months ago and am only just getting round to reviewing, but it’s stuck with me so well since then, which is always a sign of a good read! The book focusses on two men, brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek. Peter is 30 something, successfully and competently working in Dublin as a lawyer. Ivan is 22, socially awkward, a reserved chess prodigy. Following their father’s death, the brothers take different paths in their grief, navigating a world without the man who raised them. With a large 10 year gap between the two, this is the story of them trying to understand one another, perhaps for the first time in their lives. The novel that plays out is, in my opinion, the most complex of plots in a Rooney book so far. “No one is perfect. Sometimes you need people to be perfect and they can’t be and you hate them forever for not being even though it isn’t their fault and it’s not yours either. You just needed something they didn’t have in them to give you.” Switching between points of view throughout, I found it really interesting how Rooney chose different writing styles for each character, reflecting their personalities. Ivan’s world is chess and Rooney cleverly uses the game as a metaphor for the internal struggles that her characters face, mirroring their emotional battles and a desire to win. His chapters are more clipped, more fragmented than his brother’s, whose chapters seemed a little more familiar to Rooney’s usual style. A more mature read than her other work, both men’s lives and personalities are explored deeply and the depiction of sibling love and rivalry was written so accurately that you could believe these were real people. Both brothers are seeking success and happiness, and their deep, long, internal monologues really made me, as the reader, appreciate Rooney’s talent in confronting feelings of grief and despair without making this a sad and dreary read. It’s so interesting to consider grief beyond death… grief for things that didn’t happen, couldn’t happen, the life we wanted and the life we got. Overall rating: With themes of brotherhood, grief, despair and loneliness, Sally Rooney’s latest novel, ‘Intermezzo’ is a sensational read – 5 stars!

I saw a lot of people tweeting about this book on Twitter so had to buy myself a copy as I had somehow missed the ability to pre-review it prior to publication I’m found it hard to settle into reading this book initially yhe author has a very distinctive writing style with incomplete sentences and lots of very short sentences mimicking thought processes this quite unusual.and took some getting used to .after a few hours reading it started to feel more natural and I settled into the book The story brings out a lot of the thoughts that we repress and I found myself empathising mainly with the socially awkward, probably autistic chess master Ivan the most. The Autistic character seems very real and authentic. I have a number of autistic friends and I can see elements of all of us in him. I liked the idea that there was someone for everyone in the awkward main character? Ultimately finds his love match not necessarily where he was expecting it ? The novel has some of the best most authentic sex scenes I’ve read messy bits and all This author is well known after Normal People her previous novel and I’m sure this book will be loved by her loyal leadership. I liked but didn’t love it. This review would appear on Goodreads and my book blog bionic Sarah S books on Wordpress I will also publish it on Amazon UK.

This novel has elicited polarising reactions, and I can see why. Rooney, who has garnered accolades for documenting the messiness of modern relationships on four well-received novels so far, is more than a competent writer. But her characters are so flawed it is difficult to develop empathy for them and yet they are so realistic you marvel at her ability to bring them to life that you can’t help but react to them, like it or not. This latest offering is about two brothers who are coping with the aftermath of their father’s death, which brings their already fractious relationship with each other to a head. Their ten-year age gap and polar memories of their father with whom they each had very different experiences growing up only makes them more distant from each other. But this is not so much the story, but, to me, a crutch which the brothers use to explain away their bad behaviour. Much of the time, other characters around them, i.e. their mother and their love interests that each of them disapprove of, find themselves having to apologise for their grief, which became a little annoying after a while. That said, Rooney is a firmly humanistic writer, in that she is wholly immersed in her characters’ struggles with faith and their own failings. They often pray while claiming to have trouble believing there is a God, or at least one that listens and at times, (self-servingly enough) bends to their will. She doesn’t judge any of their preconceptions, which makes what she conveys through her characters rather interesting. There are many scenes of confrontations between the characters and philosophical musings, making this quite an introspective novel. As such, I felt it went on for a tad too long (450+ pages on Kindle) and became overindulgent. Rooney seems keen to show there are no neat endings in life but in doing so, she somehow managed to provide a rather idealistic one where everyone comes to terms just a little too easily with the middle ground.

Loved this book: such a clever style of writing and insight into the characters' thinking, you become extremely attached to them. Rooney describes the minutiae of life with such a keen eye that she makes them become both interesting and important to the story. She is one very talented delicate writer and most people will recognise part of themselves in her characters.

Book came in creased and with folds on the corners and stains

Love the way is written, the stream of conscious, the description and dialogue, all intertwined. And the grief. The acceptance. The love.

Un grand livre qui est magnifique avec un courant de conscience, très précis et touchant. Belle histoire entre deux frères.

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