Intermezzo

From the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Normal People, an exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family.

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.

Review

Intermezzo is perfect - truly wonderful - a tender, funny page-turner about the derangements of grief, and Rooney's richest treatment yet of messy romantic entanglements . Is there a better novelist at work right now? -- Anthony Cummins ― Observer

Her most mature and moving book to date . By the final pages my eyes were red and swollen. I read it in a state of rapture. -- Johanna Thomas-Corr ― Sunday Times

Rooney has discovered her full literary prowess . [I] felt that for the time spent reading Intermezzo, I had gone more deeply into the world . Sublime literature will do that for you. -- Jo Hamya ― Independent

If a perfect Sally Rooney novel exists, this might just be it . Her best novel yet. ― Evening Standard

Rooney's best book yet . A complex, dark and philosophical read. It's a marvel. ― iNews

Reading her piercing descriptions of passion, heartache, drunkenness or rage, you stop and wonder, how did she know that? ― The Economist

Really impressive and thoroughly enjoyable. I even, as with Conversations With Friends, had a little weep at the end. -- Rick O'Shea ― Irish Independent

A breathtakingly intimate look at love and desire in its many different forms as Rooney delves deep into her characters to reveal what's really in their hearts. ― Red

This is a writer pushing herself to test and explore both her characters and her art . This so-called 'voice of a generation' is in it for the long haul. As are we. ― Marie Claire

Her best yet. There's more introspection here, more vulnerability from the characters, and this allows a greater connection. ― Good Housekeeping

Rooney's no longer just the mouthpiece on twenty-something romantic angst. She's so much more. ― Harper's Bazaar

With watchmaker precision, Rooney tweezers open the workings of a lattice of intimate relations and gives a precise reading - astringent and empathetic at the same time - of the minutely-changing atmospherics in a number of living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms. -- Jesse Armstrong ― New Statesman

Intermezzo is that rare thing: a deeply serious and intellectually ambitious novel that's also a popular hit. Centred on two grieving brothers - Peter, a human rights lawyer, and Ivan, a chess prodigy - and the women in their orbit, Rooney's fourth novel explores the near-constant tension between our private and public selves with a piercing brilliance. ― Financial Times

About the Author

Sally Rooney is an Irish novelist. She is the author of Conversations with Friends, Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You.