Intermezzo

The expectations for any new work by Sally Rooney inevitably run high. The so-called “Salinger of the Snapchat generation” has a way of getting under readers’ skin, driving fans to midnight release parties and into frenzied social media debate. Her fourth novel, Intermezzo, met the moment. Peter and Ivan, Dublin brothers with a hefty age gap, are untethered and grieving the death of their father, seeking solace, or at least distraction, in their relationships with women. Peter—the older brother at 32, a financially successful lawyer—is mentally gutted, torturing himself with guilt over a relationship with a college student he can’t take seriously while still pining for his first love. Ivan—the baby at 22, brilliant but socially awkward and slower to launch—is half-heartedly pursuing a career in chess when he meets and falls for a 36-year-old divorcée. It’s Ivan’s new romance that the brothers can’t stop fighting about, dredging up arguments about what it means for members of a family to respect, love, and care for one another. At the time when they need each other most, Peter and Ivan just keep pushing each other away. Rooney employs two distinctive narrative voices to tell an immersive story about the brothers’ fight to feel whole again after their shattering loss.

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