When I saw Sally Rooney’s newest book Intermezzo (2024) in a Calgary airport kiosk, I knew I had to read it; it seems to be on everyone’s top 10 books of 2024 lists. Plus, I’d just finished Normal People (2017) and its television adaptation (both of which I became instantly obsessed with), so I had to see if Rooney could top it with this new book.
Intermezzo is a story centred around two brothers, Peter and Ivan (who are complete opposites), their inappropriately-age-gapped girlfriends, and navigating grief only a few months after their father’s funeral. Peter, a junior lawyer in Dublin, overthinks to the extreme. His thoughts are incomplete, fast-paced, and tend to bounce around. He’s constantly trying to solve what he sees as the problems in his life, which are usually just the people in his life. Peter carries a lot of responsibility for other people’s happiness.Â
Whereas his brother Ivan, 10 years his junior — who works as an online data analyst and competes in chess competitions — tends to be more methodical in his overthinking: every interaction, every socialization gets examined. Ivan frequently thinks about how people see him instead of how he sees them. The two brothers clash, and although the book alternates between each brother’s perspective, they spend very little time together throughout the novel. Instead, we see how both brothers grieve and try to move on with their lives almost in spite of the other.
Rooney changes her writing style to fit the inner dialogue of each brother, which I thought was genius, although incredibly tedious to read. Every other chapter is written with short, fragmented sentences to reflect Peter’s ever-changing mind. It’s hard to keep track of what is being said with such chaotic writing — largely owing to the fact that Rooney doesn’t use quotations to denote dialogue. There were many times I had to go back and reread full paragraphs to understand what was going on.Â
This is in comparison to Ivan’s perspective, which is littered with run-on sentences and plenty of commas, making it hard to digest. The perspective change is more useful in this novel compared to Normal People; it really shows how each brother thinks of the other. We also get the privilege of hearing Ivan’s girlfriend Margret’s perspective early in the book, giving readers insight into how skewed Ivan’s perspective of himself can be. In turn, Ivan’s perspective gives us insight into how skewed Peter’s perspective is.Â
It’s physically and mentally a hard book to read, and yet I couldn’t stop. The content is as heavy as the writing, as Rooney frequently brings up philosophical questions such as: what is god’s relationship to us (her Irish Catholicism really came through there), why we love, and how we can truly care about others. The long chapters made it hard to find a good break to put down the book and digest these big ideas.Â
Rooney’s writing really highlights the difference in how someone else sees us versus how we see ourselves. She shows how we are unreliable narrators — even to ourselves — which is what makes her books so compelling. Her characters are, to quote her own book title, normal people — they live ordinary lives and have complex relationships with each other and themselves.Â
It’s comforting in a way to know that — even if they are fictional — people overthink, maybe as much as I do. That there are people out there who also self-sabotage and can’t fully say what they mean because of their deep insecurities. Maybe complexity is actually human nature, not desire. Or that, deep down, we desire complexity. Or maybe this is all just babble from a tired writer who thinks too much.Â
If you want your brain to be constantly thinking, reading, and absorbing the complexity of human relationships, Intermezzo is the book for you.
