Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Sally Rooney's fourth novel is a brutal but beautiful exploration of grief that follows two brothers coming to terms with their past and their present. Intermezzo asks, in the words of the older brother, Peter, "What can life be made to accommodate, what can one life hold inside itself without breaking?" The answer is, I suppose, something that everyone is looking for, in one way or another, in this life. Sally Rooney grapples with this question and the uncertain nature of its answer in her most emotionally potent work yet.
The novel begins with a stream of conscious narration that reminded me of reading James Joyce's Ulysses. This is how we are introduced to peter: chaotic, confusing, and stuck in his own head to an almost unbearable extent. As we get to know him, it's clear he feels the same way: to have thoughts, memories, feelings, is unbearable. Rooney created in Peter a character that is often insufferable and at times undeserving of forgiveness, but who we want to see succeed.
His younger brother, Ivan, is much the opposite. Ivan's story is told with clear and simple prose, in the style of Rooney's earlier novels. A chess prodigy with a degree in theoretical physics, Ivan's mind is presented as logical and calculating.
We meet both brothers just a couple of weeks after their father's death, and as the novel unravels their joint and disjointed lives, their complexities become nearly too much to follow. And that makes them incredibly, undeniably human. As Ivan falls for an older woman and Peter navigates his feelings for two women, they go a little, well crazy. Ivan's past haunts him, and the reader, and peter continues to spiral out of control, but as a reader it is hard to blame either of them for their problems.
Margaret, the older woman who Ivan has feelings for, wisely tells him: "I mean, I only think families are complicated." That is, at its core, what this book is about: when families get torn apart and forced back together, what can be expected to become of them?
While I read, I found myself almost worried about Sally Rooney (see the screenshots below, courtesy of my friend Casey). But more than that, I found myself in awe. What I loved most about Conversations with Friends was Rooney's seemingly endless ability to describe how it feels to think, to be burdened with the capacity for thought. In Intermezzo, I became very attached to these deeply flawed characters for this exact reason. Peter's mental health struggles and Ivan's insecurities, no matter how extreme, remain relatable.
And as a bonus, this novel made me feel honestly very good about my own family. Families are complicated, grief is hard, and everybody is flawed, but wow, thank god my brothers have never blocked my number after a death in the family. Below you will find some of my and Casey’s reactions to this book. Crazy. Crazy good.
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