The HandBook Club: Our Honest Review Of Sally Rooney’s Newest Book
No modern-day novelist inspires the level of fanfare and commentary as Sally Rooney. Bursting onto the scene in her mid-twenties with Conversations with Friends, and especially Normal People, she is now not just a novelist but a cultural movement. There are three separate articles written about ‘The Cult of Sally Rooney‘, the concept of the ‘Sally Rooney Girl‘ has been born, and about 30 novelists since 2018 have been dubbed the ‘new Sally Rooney‘ despite most being younger than her.
Intermezzo, her fourth book, was released last September, immediately becoming Ireland’s fastest-selling title of the year, and receiving positive reviews from critics. Mercifully, it also received fewer thought pieces – people seemed more likely to interact with the book and its author on their own merit, not the wider cultural debate. Read on to hear what we thought of 2024’s most-discussed release for our latest book club pick.
What is it about?
If her previous works were relationship dramas that featured messy familial entanglements, Intermezzo is a family drama that features messy relationships. It is a slight shift but a crucial one, centring around the fractured relationship between two brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek, in the immediate aftermath of their father’s funeral. Taking place over just a few months, we soon learn this is a crucial juncture in their lives.
Peter, 32, on the outside, represents the platonic ideal of a metropolitan Dubliner. Smart (what Rooney protagonist isn’t?), good-looking, with a prosperous career as a human rights lawyer, thus able to attain financial prosperity without comprising on his ideals (as opposed to their step-brother Derek, who works for a corporate law firm and contributes “zero, literally nothing at all to human civilisation”).
Yet he is depressed, medicating himself to sleep and balancing his relationships with two women: College student Naomi, to whom he sends rent money, and long-term ex-girlfriend Sylvia, who Peter still can’t bring himself to imagine a future without.
Intermezzo is a family drama that features messy relationships.
Ivan, 22, is a socially awkward semi-professional chess player and recent college graduate who enters into his first real romantic relationship with Margaret, a 36-year-old married woman living in a small town in the West of Ireland. What starts as a clandestine affair, one they both believe isn’t a realistic long-term prospect, quickly morphs into a deep connection as they find comfort in each other from their respective trauma.
Why you should read it
Many have made the point that there is no sharper writer than Rooney at depicting modern relationships – not just romantic ones, but how humans interact with each other in the 21st Century. The moniker that has stuck to her since Conversations With Friends was published in 2017 is ‘The Salinger of the Snapchat generation’. It was always a catchy if meaningless phrase, mainly based on how prominently dialogue and online communication featured in her first three novels. Beautiful World almost entirely traded in interiority for email correspondence and dialogue.
Intermezzo, however, does a complete 180. The majority of the novel is made up of the interior lives of Peter and Ivan, often with Joycean stream-of-consciousness. Early on, Ivan thinks to himself, “A person’s outward appearance does not define the boundaries of their internal feelings”, which almost feels like Rooney in dialogue with herself, a justification for the shift. It’s a stylistic switch-up that has proven a bit of a hurdle. Some who devoured Normal People in one sitting have struggled to get into it, but once you find your groove with the style, you will find yourself in familiar Rooney territory. The characters are always the smartest in the room, Trinity College features heavily, and some of the cultural critiques in the novel are so astute and enjoyable that it makes you long for her to release an essay collection next. One of the narrative flashpoints occurs when Naomi is aggressively evicted from her rented home, a topic Rooney has written about in The Irish Times.
The relationships in Intermezzo might be Rooney’s strongest yet. In Normal People, the breakdowns between Connell and Marianne are often caused by a lack of communication that only seems unresolvable because the plot makes it so; however, the fissure that occurs between Peter and Ivan is frustrating because of how believable it is. Right before their crucial argument, Ivan “senses that, for the first time in his life, Peter is speaking to him as an equal”. Peter, ruminating on the breakdown of their relationship, somewhat desperately thinks to himself, “I know I’ve never done anything to help you, Ivan, but in principle, in spirit. I’ve been on your side all along”. The history of their uneasy but deep bond is etched into every interaction.
All three main romantic relationships are thwarted by existing in a grey area of social convention. Margaret fears judgment from her small town for pursuing Ivan, who is almost half her age, while Peter is constantly trying to rationalise the age gap and transactional nature between himself and Naomi. Despite admitting they still love each other, Sylvia ended her relationship with Peter after suffering a devastating injury in an accident that left her in chronic pain, as she felt she could no longer provide a conventional partnership. As they flirt with rekindling, they struggle to identify whether they see a future where they’re together, or whether they’re trying to turn back time.
All three main romantic relationships are thwarted by existing in a grey area of social convention.
It is not a flawless work, however. Peter’s section especially can spiral into something not entirely controlled, and Rooney’s own personal voice is sometimes too overbearing, as if they are used as a way to for her put forward her own arguments (again, I’m here for the essay collection). The strongest part comes in the shared perspective sections; when we see characters in conversation, and Rooney flits in and out of each of their perspectives.
Verdict
Intermezzo may not hit the emotional heights of Normal People, and can often feel like it’s treading water, but it plunges into messier, more complicated and mature depths. These are relationships with no easy answers. One of the least satisfying critiques of Rooney is that, for a self-admitted Marxist, politics is absent in her work. What Rooney understands, and what these critiques fail to recognise, is that the social and the political are always present in the relationship dynamics she explores. This may not ever be one of her most beloved novels, but reading it you can’t help but feel grateful such an intelligent writer is here, making sense of the modern world for us.
You can’t help but feel grateful such an intelligent writer is here, making sense of the modern world for us.
Looking for something similar? Read these next
Rooney said she was inspired by this masterwork, and you don’t have to look too far for the parallels. She said, “Its plot deals with the death of a family patriarch, the turmoil of an eldest son torn between his love for two different women, and the tribulations of an intellectually gifted younger brother named Ivan”.
Along with James Joyce, Virginia Woolf is one of the main pioneers of the stream-of-consciousness modernist style that Rooney employs in Intermezzo. Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway seems a likely inspiration for the sections where Peter wanders through Dublin.
Fancy another award-winning novel about family drama in Ireland? Paul Murray’s epic finds just the right amount of comedy and sadness, depending on how you interpret the shocking and open-ended finale – sure to spark arguments for years to come.
Our April Pick…
Mood Machine
Liz Pelly
Spotify has reached the level of ubiquity achieved by Google, Apple and Nike – so it’s about time somebody wrote a book to tell us how it all works.
Drawing on over a hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today’s highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed.
