Intermezzo

Intermezzo marks a significant evolution for Sally Rooney. While her earlier novels made her the defining voice of millennial romantic anxiety, this book expands her emotional and formal range in striking ways. The novel centers on Peter and Ivan Koubek, two brothers reeling from the death of their father, whose grief manifests in radically different ways. Peter, a successful barrister in his early thirties, numbs himself through a complicated arrangement between two women. Ivan, a 22-year-old chess prodigy, falls into an unexpected relationship with an older woman in a rural town.

What makes Intermezzo exceptional is the way Rooney uses these parallel narratives to explore how the same loss can fracture people along entirely different lines. Peter's sections are rendered in a fractured, stream-of-consciousness style that mirrors his inability to sit with his feelings, while Ivan's chapters unfold with a directness that reflects his more earnest engagement with the world. The formal daring here is quietly radical, and it pays off in an emotional crescendo that earns every ounce of its considerable impact.

Rooney has always been brilliant at capturing the way people talk past each other, the way intimacy and miscommunication coexist. But Intermezzo adds a new dimension: the particular anguish of fraternal love, the way brothers can be strangers to each other precisely because they share so much history. It is her most mature and moving work to date.