Summary and Reviews of Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Intermezzo

A Novel

by Sally Rooney
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • First Published:
  • Sep 24, 2024, 464 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family―but especially love―from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties―successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women―his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude―a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
These discussion questions were written by Alicia Calvo Hernández for BookBrowse.

  1. Sally Rooney is a renowned author. Before reading Intermezzo, did you have any expectations based on her previous novels? How did your actual reading experience compare to these expectations?
  2. How does Intermezzo differentiate itself from Rooney's earlier works?
  3. Rooney's first two novels have been adapted into successful TV series. Do you think the potential for a TV adaptation influenced the way Intermezzo is written? If so, how?
  4. The novel is told from the perspectives of Peter, Ivan, and Margaret. Why do you think the author chose these three as narrators? Do you agree with this choice, or would you have preferred other ...
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

These are the central themes of the novel: mourning and, above all, regret. A death sheds light on the life of the deceased, but also on the lives of those close to him; it invites them to question their past. The siblings are suddenly aware of the brevity of life and how disappointing it can be. Intermezzo is not Rooney's most enjoyable novel, but it is perhaps her most mature. The themes are, and so is the narrative style. Yet when you close the book—and sometimes you need to close it—you don't wonder what Peter and Ivan are up to, as you might have done with Marianne and Connell from Normal People (2018) or Frances from Conversations with Friends (2017): mastery has annihilated the attractive innocence of those early characters...continued

Full Review (776 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Alicia Calvo Hernández).

Media Reviews

Oprah Daily
Stylistically daring, emotionally explosive, and endlessly wise, this is Rooney's best work yet.

The Guardian
The most talked-about author of her generation returns with a hotly awaited fourth book ... With a Joycean tang to the prose, it continues the deepening of her style since the crystalline insouciance of her 2017 debut Conversations with Friends.

Booklist (starred review)
[Intermezzo] might be her best yet: a tale of depth and grand sweep, an understated study of characters caught circling the margin of some great and unknown thing, and a diversion of pure enjoyment, too. Rooney's title tells us these brothers, in their love and fury for one another, are at an in-between moment, as she carefully, brilliantly writes them out of it.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)
[A] boldly experimental and emotionally devastating story of estrangement...The novel's deliberate pacing veers from the propulsiveness of Normal People and the deep character work contrasts with the topicality of Beautiful World, but in many ways this feels like Rooney's most fully realized work, especially as she channels the modernist styles of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf...Even the author's skeptics are liable to be swept away by this novel's forceful currents of feeling.

Kirkus Reviews
Having the book's protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter's point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences...The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character...Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real. Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.

Reader Reviews

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Sally Rooney Reads from Intermezzo in Dublin

Author photo of Sally Rooney looking at the camera expresionlessOn Saturday, September 21, 2024, more than 500 people gathered at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, located a few meters from St. Stephen's Green, a setting in Sally Rooney's new novel Intermezzo. The Irish author, one of the most influential figures on the contemporary literary scene, greeted the audience with a warm smile and a hand over her heart in a gesture of gratitude to those attending the presentation of her latest novel.

Sally Rooney has become a global phenomenon. She could be defined as a literary Taylor Swift: the publication of her books has caused bookstores to open early to accommodate long lines of people eager to get a copy; limited and autographed editions of her works sell for hundreds; her fans, mainly young women...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Intermezzo, try these:

We have 5 read-alikes for Intermezzo, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Sally Rooney
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    Suggested in the Stars
    by Yoko Tawada
    In Scattered All Over the Earth, Yoko Tawada's 2018 lightly dystopian novel, a ragtag group of young...
  • Book Jacket: Shred Sisters
    Shred Sisters
    by Betsy Lerner
    "No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister" is a wry aphorism that appears late in ...
  • Book Jacket: Model Home
    Model Home
    by Rivers Solomon
    Rivers Solomon's novel Model Home opens with a chilling and mesmerizing line: "Maybe my mother is ...
  • Book Jacket: The Mighty Red
    The Mighty Red
    by Louise Erdrich
    Permit me to break the fourth wall. Like any good reviewer, I aim to analyze a book dispassionately,...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    In the Garden of Monsters
    by Crystal King

    A woman with no past, a man who knows her, and a monstrous garden that separates their worlds.

  • Book Jacket

    The Naming Song
    by Jedediah Berry

    Miyazaki meets Guillermo del Toro.

Book Club Giveaway!
Win Let Us Descend

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward imagines the life of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War in this instant classic.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J O the B

and be entered to win..