Intermezzo, Sally Rooney
‘Without other people there would be no life at all’ considers Margaret, one of the five characters we follow throughout Intermezzo, Sally Rooney’s latest novel, which overflows with life in all its beautiful and devastating minutiae. There is also death, however, as well as grief, loneliness, addiction, eviction and their subsequent fallouts.
At the centre are Peter and Ivan Koubek, two brothers struggling to connect as they are destabilised by the loss of their father. The three women around them try best to offer support, kindness and consistency but, as ever with Rooney’s plots, romance is turbulent and familial relationships fraught.
Peter, 32, is a human rights lawyer who maintains a successful career whilst wrestling demons, and the fact that he is in love with two women so diametrically opposed it should be impossible, but never is. He grapples with how much he comes to depend on the companionship they offer him. Ivan, 22, is a chess prodigy whose ascendent rating stagnated in a period of readjustment. As we meet him, he is distanced from his childhood home, his mother, and his beloved dog, Alexei – even the pets are considerately drawn here.
Much of the elegance in this novel is that Rooney manages to propel the plot without describing every interaction in real time. We experience events from different points of view, and Margaret’s observations of Ivan are seamlessly replaced by the fragments of previous conversations she remembers, fortifying her growing feelings for him. These are the moments that matter to her and naturally allow the affection to build from the pages. We really believe that when returning to each character in a different chapter, they have been living away from our gaze.
Rooney’s skill also lies in the sparsity of the dialogue, which is often taut and tense while heaving with introspection and repressed emotion. It is the moments between communication, the characters become ever more vivid, as they reflect on painful memories and realise their pain was often an extension of someone else’s.
While observations have been made that Rooney is emulating a Joycean style, and Ulysses in particular, her characters themselves are the least bookish they have ever been. They are academic and high achieving, but none of them inhabit the same literary milieu as Bobbi and Francis in Conversations with Friends or Eileen and Alice in Beautiful World Where Are You.
This is a refreshing departure from a world in which Rooney is both famous for existing in and immortalising to her readers. For the eagle-eyed, there is a delicate nod to a moment in Normal People in an exchange between Margaret and Ivan. ‘If there is a God, I'm sure he loves you very much. Ivan lowers his eyes, yeah I feel that sometimes, like when I’m with you.’
Alongside the existential and metaphysical debates, there is also grounded and genuine intimacy. There are Sunday morning newspapers and coffee, passionate sex, walks on the beach, drinks with friends in the pub, toast in bed. There is also humour, with Ivan’s blunt observations cutting through his awkwardness so perfectly, offering light relief.
Rarely is such an anticipated book so worth it. But cultural buzz aside, Intermezzo is a near perfect novel. We feel and we learn through reading it, and the lasting lesson is about embracing the difficulties of relationships, the ‘in spite ofs’ – how true connection is hard won with honest and exposing conversations, and how through this, we experience life.
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