Review: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Encouraged by their lovers, two brothers plan a dinner to reconcile and talk about their lives. But things start to go haywire and spill into their love lives in this novel that examines pain and longing
Since her first novel,Conversation with Friends (2017), Sally Rooney has established herself as one of the most influential writers of her generation. Her other successes, Normal People (2018) and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) have struck readers with their observations of contemporary life. Her latest work, Intermezzo, once again gives readers something fresh to think about.
At the outset, we have two brothers, Peter and Ivan, who are not on the best of terms. Their father’s death at the beginning of the novel has upset their lives. Peter, the elder brother, is dating a woman 10 years younger while still seeing his ex-girlfriend from college over walks and lunches. At 22, Ivan is bored of being called a prodigy at chess and only plays it because he doesn’t know what else he is good at. He bumps into Margaret at a tournament and is struck by her elegance. Encouraged by their lovers, the brothers plan a dinner to reconcile and talk about their lives. But things start to go haywire between the two and spills into their love lives.
Rooney’s writing has cadence and rigour. In this book, she extends her creative faculties further by structuring it into chapters that alternate between Peter and Ivan. In the ones focusing on the former, the reader listens to him and his agonies. “Making himself small, and smaller, until no longer there. As if it was him, his own fault, taking up too much space. I’m sorry… There’s something wrong with me.” Here, Rooney employs a kind of free verse format which grows on the reader alongside Peter’s character. In the chapters focusing both on Ivan and his 36-year-old partner Margaret, Rooney tells us of each of their experiences like it is a game of chess where there are no opponents trying to defeat one another. “He didn’t understand, she thought, or didn’t want to accept what the passage of time would do to them both. She would soon grow older… unable to give him children, while he was still a very young man.” This shift of style through the chapters not only reveals the characters through their minds as they make sense of the messes they encounter, it also holds the reader’s attention throughout.
Rooney’s early novels have dealt with age in a slightly off-hand manner. In Conversations with Friends, we see Frances and Nick deal with a 10-year age gap while having an affair. The story was so focused on exploring Frances and her confusion over her decision that the conflict arising out of the age gap was glossed over, or faintly explored. In Intermezzo, however, she has two relationships running together with an age gap of a decade or so and with the genders switched too. In Naomi and Peter’s plot, the reader is made sensitive to a young woman’s nebulous relationship with an older man who provides for her. At the same time, in Margaret and Ivan’s plot, Rooney presents the vulnerabilities of an older woman with a boy fresh out of college. The author doesn’t dismiss what her men feel about these age differences either. Peter’s conscience haunts him with questions. Ivan cannot deal with being condescended to by everyone around him. These characters are unsure about age differences in a world where these notions are considered old fashioned problems. Rooney admirably sinks into the various conflicts arising out of age and shows that while the age of who you love is important, what is also relevant is how you think through and become someone in love.
Intermezzo also looks at broader social patterns, from Dublin’s housing crisis, labour inequalities, substance abuse, and patriarchy to the Irish legal practice, academia, and concerns over neoliberalism, Rooney covers distinct patterns of contemporary life through her characters, their professions and their thoughts. What stands out particularly is her subtle commentary on substance abuse in Ireland. Current statistics suggest that the rate of abuse has indeed grown in Ireland. Through Peter’s constant consumption of pills and other drugs and his mother’s casual tone when she asks if he has had one, Rooney exposes the everydayness of drug consumption in Ireland. The novel’s narrator doesn’t make a hue and cry of it but simply shows where the problem lies.
In Part 1, which is a little repetitive, the characters are well written and don’t need too much labour for their exposition but the reader finds himself spending too much time in their minds. Rooney is stunning with scenes where people are talking to each other and has the ability – reminiscent of Iris Murdoch – to reveal the individual while he or she is giving voice to their thoughts. Her Proustian allusion in the middle of the book also reveals her character’s thoughts. All of this can sometimes leave the reader yearning for more scenes where dialogues brew conflict and inner dilemmas are revealed.
Those who have been following Rooney’s work since her debut will note how far she has come. This novel shows how much her writing and thoughts have grown since Frances’s melodramatic story. Surpassing the supercilious Marxism of Normal People and the save-the-world strategy of Beautiful World, Where Are You, Intermezzo lays bare the mysteries that haunt different stages of life. This is the story of an Irish family that feels torn apart and seeks the time to love one another within the intermezzo of life’s complexities. Rooney has never written as beautifully about pain and longing as she has done in Intermezzo. This reviewer was unable to stop himself from crying by the end.
Rahul Singh is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Presidency University, Kolkata. He writes about book at Instagram (@fook_bood) and X (@rahulzsing).
