Photo by Quinn Kinsella
By Quinn Kinsella
October 1st, 2024
Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, is her most nuanced and moving work to date. Centered around the Koubek brothers, this novel tells the complex story of brotherhood and the relationships they find themselves engaged with in the wake of their father’s death. Peter, the elder brother, is a successful lawyer. Ivan is a skilled and celebrated chess player. The title comes from a chess move of the same name and the game is used throughout the book as an allegory for the conflicts these two brothers find themselves in. More commonly referred to as a zwischenzug, an intermezzo is an in-between play that gives its player the upper hand. It is a move that calls for immediate action from the opponent.
Rooney is an Irish author whose second novel Normal People earned her international acclaim. Her work centers on the complexities of modern relationships, in all their beauty and relevance. She weaves the digital age into her stories, giving vibrancy and insight into miscommunication, infidelity, friendships, and all the ugliness that sharing one’s deepest feelings entails. Her prose is clean and modern yet also imbued with heart and originality that makes for the perfect page turner.
Her omission of quotation marks is striking and disorienting at first. Margarett Atwood and Cormac McCarthy made this bold choice in what are considered their masterpieces, The Handmaid’s Tale and Blood Meridian respectively. Some readers may find this distracting, and has led to critique of Rooney’s prose being muddled or needlessly complex. It is a style one either gets accustomed to or not, and is one of the more divisive aspects of this novel. In Intermezzo, Rooney utilizes this technique more than her last three novels and to far greater effect. The lack of quotations creates a unity between the brothers while simultaneously contrasting the two in every way imaginable. Rooney has used this technique before, but her writing shines in this project specifically and this choice vastly impacts how readers perceive the two brothers.
The book’s plot is similar to Rooney’s previous novel, Beautiful World, Where are You. The chapters switch narratively between the two brothers. The switch allows the reader time to digest each brothers’ story in turn. The book is written in third person limited, granting an introspective view of the characters’ thoughts. Aside from the Koubek brothers, there are Syliva and Naomi, the love interests of the brothers. Peter’s first love, Sylvia, remains a major force in his life while Naomi, who is significantly younger than him, is the current object of his affections. For the more introverted Ivan, his awkwardness and lack of experience discourages romantic pursuits though he still yearns for romance. He meets Margaret, who is fourteen years his senior, and instantly feels a connection. Rooney uses repetition expertly throughout the book when describing how they see each other as “from the same camp.”
The relationships between these five characters unfold in a very Rooney-esque way, as in her fourth novel she is quickly developing an extremely distinct and signature narrative structure. This style is a mélange of lavish character studies of a certain Irish socioeconomic position and her characters’ deeply complicated and strained relationships with each other and their families. Rooney seems to take inspiration from Jane Austen, as she similarly never strayed from her wheelhouse of a particular social status and her stories are similar yet never repetitive. Austen’s work varies dramatically in tone and theme, as does Rooney’s. Though she has been criticized for this narrow lens through which her stories are told, it is this defining lens that brings the smallest details into focus while maintaining a grounded and comprehensible world view.
Rooney’s novels have become popular on social media platforms for their eye-catching covers and their relatability for the internet generation, navigating relationships for the first time. Her characters commit such heinous acts of miscommunication that leaves the reader wanting to shake the characters by their shoulders. But what Rooney is cleverly doing is shaking the reader by their shoulders. Snapping them into reality with unreality, and fictional characters that by the last page seem like family, or friends one has had since childhood.
Sally Rooney proves with Intermezzo that she is the leading voice of a new literary generation. In an age when life seems like a chess game more than ever, Rooney gives a reason to hope, reason to cry, and reason to believe life is indeed worth living despite the seemingly infinite predicaments found in society. She does this all while pulling us into her utterly captivating world yet again. A world where we find comfort in the relatability of her characters and the knowledge that we are indeed all human.
Normal People has been cited as a modern classic. With time, I think readers will grow to believe Intermezzo is her best work to date. Sally Rooney is just getting started, and if she continues at this rate of high quality prose and narrative, she will go down as one of the twenty-first century's leading novelists. Fans of her previous work will adore her newest book. For first-time readers, it is an easy point of entry into her body of work that will leave them itching for more. It is relatable and accessible, and readers are bound to find a part of themselves in one of these five brilliantly written characters.
Comments