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Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Literary fiction

Intermezzo

by Sally Rooney

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Quick take

Everyone’s favorite modern Irish scribe Sally Rooney returns with a piercing ode to family, grief, love and friendship.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Romance

    Romance

  • Illustrated icon, 400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Buzzy

    Buzzy

  • Illustrated icon, Siblings

    Siblings

Synopsis

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.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Intermezzo.

Intermezzo

1

Didn’t seem fair on the young lad. That suit at the funeral. With the braces on his teeth, the supreme discomfort of the adolescent. On such occasions, one could almost come to regret one’s own social brilliance. Gives him the excuse, or gives him in any case someone at whom to look pleadingly between the mandatory handshakes. God love him. Nearly twenty-three now: Ivan the terrible. Difficult actually to believe the suit on him. Picked it up perhaps in some little damp-smelling second-hand shop for the local hospice, paid in cash, rode it home on his bicycle crumpled in a reusable plastic bag. Yes, that in fact would make sense of it, would bring into alignment the suit in its resplendent ugliness and the personality of the younger brother, ten years younger. Not without style in his own way. Certain kind of panache in his absolute disregard for the material world. Brains and beauty, an aunt said once. About them both. Or was it Ivan brains and Peter beauty. Thanks, I think. He crosses Watling Street now towards the apartment that is not an apartment, the house that is not a house, eleven or is it twelve days since the funeral, back in town. Back at work, such as it is. Or back anyway to Naomi’s place. And what will she be wearing when she answers the door. Slides his phone from his pocket into the palm of his hand as he reaches the front step, cool tactility of the screen as it lights under his fingers, typing. Outside. Evenings drawing in now and she’s back at her lectures, presumably. No reply but she sees the message, and then the predictable sequence, the so familiar and by now indirectly arousing sequence of sounds as behind the front door she comes up the old basement staircase and into the hall. Classical conditioning: how did it take so long to figure that out? Common sense. Not that. Everyday experience. The relationship of memory and feeling. The opening door.

Hello, Peter, she says.

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Why I love it

Sally Rooney is back! Like many of you, I’ve been obsessed with her writing since I first read Normal People. Her characters make me feel seen and understood and her stories delicately clarify parts of life that I so often find inexplicable. Intermezzo is no exception. This touching exploration of togetherness has everything I adore about Sally Rooney’s books, with a fresh twist! I think you’re gonna love it just as much as I did.

Peter and Ivan Koubek are brothers and polar opposites. Peter is an established lawyer in his thirties. Ivan is 22 and a geeky college grad who sports adult braces and a knack for chess. As Peter finds himself entranced with two romantic interests, Ivan falls deeply in love with an older woman. Clearly, the Koubek brothers’ lives are diverging—as is their relationship—but, after their father passes away, their shared grief initiates an inspired search for connection and meaning.

Curl up with Intermezzo and experience the pains of brotherhood and mourning alongside the joys of love and life. As usual, Sally Rooney pulls at your heartstrings until they break in this masterful new novel. Don’t worry, we can cry together…

Other books by Sally Rooney

Member ratings (82)

Literary fiction
Intermezzo
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The Mothers
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The Animators
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White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
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The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
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Someday, Maybe
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The Shards
Literary fiction
View all
Intermezzo
The Book of George
Real Americans
Wellness
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
Annie Bot
Bear
Mercury
True Biz
Family Happiness
The Husbands
The Lady Waiting
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Good Material
The Bullet Swallower
Happy All the Time
Alice Sadie Celine
Let Us Descend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Shark Heart
Transcendent Kingdom
Hello Beautiful
Dominicana
What's Mine and Yours
The Unsettled
Ask Again, Yes
Vladimir
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Normal People
The Verifiers
Salvage the Bones
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
I Have Some Questions for You
Black Buck
The History of Love
Age of Vice
Paper Names
The Light Pirate
The Secret History
The Kite Runner
Memorial
The Half Moon
Happiness Falls
The Gifted School
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Knockout Queen
Little Monsters
Yerba Buena
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Free Food for Millionaires
A Burning
The Mothers
The Water Dancer
Small Country
The Sympathizer
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
The Goldfinch
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
The Association of Small Bombs
Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards