Intermezzo by Sally Rooney Review

Peter and Ivan’s dad has died. The two brothers have always had a rocky relationship but without the buffer of their old duffer between them anymore, they’re gonna be ornery to one another - Irish style!

Peter is still in love with his ex, Sylvia, but due to an injury she can no longer have sex so he takes up with a younger woman, Naomi, for that stuff. Ivan meets an older woman, Margaret and they has a relationship. If you’re waiting for a hook or anything resembling stakes, you’re not gonna find it here. Get out your nightcaps cos here. Be. Boredom!

I loved Normal People - I picked it up randomly when it was first published in 2018 and read it in less than a weekend, then went on to devour Conversations with Friends and Mr Salary. Then came the follow up, Sally Rooney, Where Are You? Phew, that was a stinker! But I chalked it up to this being the difficulty of following up such an amazing novel that was like cultural lightning in a bottle. I was still on board the Roon train.

Then - choo choo! - along comes Intermezzo. This was one of the novels I was most looking forward to this year and I pre-ordered it.

Oh. No. The train was made of poo!

I read Normal People in less than 2 days - I just finished Intermezzo having bought it in late September and it’s now early November. What a slog. What an unrewarding, uninteresting, thoroughly dull novel.

There’s barely any story to hold the attention. Peter and Ivan’s relationship slowly sours before the inevitable resolution at the end. Peter dilly dallies between loving his young mistress Naomi and his ex Sylvia. Ivan and Margaret’s relationship progresses positively.

Peter inadvertently sums up the novel’s main conflict quite succinctly towards the end of the book: “He (Ivan) hates me because he thinks I’m an arrogant prick, and I look down on him because I think he’s a fucking loser.” (p.313). There’s really nothing else to it.

Ivan’s good at chess and the design of the book incorporates the game. I’ve read at least two great books with chess at the forefront of the narrative - The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis and Chess by Stefan Zweig - which probably added to my expectation that Intermezzo was going to be so good, because chess and fiction seem to mix well, and only made the disappointment more acute as this element is only surface-level in the novel. It’s just something one of the characters does.

The characters themselves are completely unremarkable. Peter’s a lawyer, unhappy with his life and behaves like a cad most of the time. Ivan’s an immature and bashful young man. Both men behave kinda embarrassingly throughout. The women though are all wise and practically saints. Margaret, Sylvia and Naomi are basically all the same: unassailable in their dignity and intelligence, and so very bland and indistinguishable for it. This novel should be called Boring People.

So what’s the point of the novel? Uh…

Peter’s 32 years old, Syvlia’s 32, and Naomi is 22. Ivan is 22 years old and Margaret is 36. So, possibly a commentary on taboo relationships - a young man with an older woman, and vice versa, or (and I hate this term) throuples? If so, I don’t know what that comment is besides “it’s fine, everyone’s a consenting adult”. Something to do with Peter being a hypocrite because he judges Ivan even though his girlfriend Naomi is doing the same thing with him? A kind of inverted mirror - but then so what; he’s a hypocrite… and?

I don’t know. Just like I don’t know why Peter’s inner monologue is written like he’s Rorschach:

“Tonight, a comedian died in New York. The point of law. To raise the question of. His briefcase then, bitter aftertaste, overcoat, and outside the chill wind of October moves through the leaves of trees. Wide grey streets around the Green, buses slowing to a stop, wheel and cry of gulls overhead. Leaves rustle over the park gates. Barred windows of Ship Street then and the vans reversing.” (p.65)

Alright, I added one line to the above quote but you get the same impression, right? Moody edginess, blunt wording, tedious reading…

I didn’t know what an “intermezzo” was so I looked it up: a light dramatic, musical, or other performance inserted between the acts of a play. So maybe the concept of the novel is we’re seeing a momentary break in the lives of Peter and Ivan after losing their father and readjusting for their new lives going forwards. Like this line from one of Peter/Rorschach’s chapters (the worst chapters in a series of terrible chapters):

“Yes, because his life is starting again, the long terrible intermission at an end, the smoke is clearing, he is finally resuming his place.” (p.351)

I’m trying to understand the novel rather than unthinkingly dismiss it out of hand because I do think Sally Rooney is a great writer and I feel like she was trying to do something here. But whatever it was, it didn’t work. It’s not especially deep or profound, thoughtful or memorable, and it’s the furthest thing from entertaining. From the beginning to the end, I was never anything but bored and waiting for something - anything - remotely worth reading would happen; and it never did.

That makes two bad novels in a row now. I’m not sure I’m ready to give up on Rooney altogether but my enthusiasm for her next book is severely tempered - that won’t be pre-ordered or read whenever it’s published, that’s for true! She might even be on the downswing of her career - did she already peak with Normal People?

Intermezzo is the most disappointing novel of 2024 and easily Sally Rooney’s worst novel.