A review of the novel “Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney
I’m a fan of Rooney’s work and have read all of her novels. This is her fourth, longest, and most ambitious.
As always, the setting is contemporary Ireland. Unusually, however,the leading characters are both men: brothers Peter (32, a successful lawyer) and Ivan (22, an aspiring chess champion).
The novel explores the relationship between the brothers, who are dealing with the grief of losing their father, and their respective relationships with women: in Peter’s case, a former lover of his own age (Sylvia) and a much younger and newer lover (Naomi) and, in Ivan’s case, a divorced woman 14 years his senior (Margaret).
The style of the book is to have alternate chapters presenting the points of view of the two brothers.
The perspective of Ivan, who is on the autistic spectrum, is represented as quite literal and straightforward. That of Peter, who consumes a lot of alcohol and has panic attacks, is much more fractured and involves sentences that have an odd word order and even missing words (reminding one of James Joyce) with lots of esoteric allusions to other texts (there are three pages of attributions at the end).
It took me a little while to become comfortable with Ivan’s ‘voice’, making this ‘harder’ than Rooney’s other novels, but it is an impressive and enjoyable work that burnishes her already formidable reputation.