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Intermezzo: A Novel Hardcover – September 24, 2024

4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 11,522 ratings

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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A National Indie Bestseller
Short-listed for the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year
Finalist for the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year

Named a Best Book of the Year and a Critics
Pick by The New York Times
Named an Essential Read by The New Yorker
Named a Best Book of the Year by
The Washington Post, Time, Financial Times, Vogue, The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, Vox, The Times (UK), Apple Books, and more
A USA Today, People, and Associated Press Top 10 Book of the Year

One of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2024

One of Chicago Public Librarys Favorite Books of the Year

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family―but especially love―from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

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.

"All the Little Raindrops: A Novel" by Mia Sheridan for $10.39
The chilling story of the abduction of two teenagers, their escape, and the dark secrets that, years later, bring them back to the scene of the crime. | Learn more

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From the Publisher

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“There is so much relief . . . in turning to a Sally Rooney novel: taking the weight of her elegant, deeply felt sentences; feeling how much control she has over the words she’s using; how strongly she believes that they should be as beautiful as she can make them. At last, the chance to relax in the presence of someone who knows what she’s doing.”
―Constance Grady, Vox

“Ms. Rooney has achieved a neat trick: She is considered the trendiest of novelists, though she writes in a traditional comic form . . . Her characters are distinct individuals whose names and actions are easy to recall, even years after reading the books.”
―B. D. McClay, Wall Street Journal

“The depths Rooney plumbs are idiosyncratically hers. In
Intermezzo, Rooney brilliantly and hypnotically creates a universe parallel to the worlds she has created in three previous novels.”
―Michael Pearson, New York Journal of Books

“On a construction level, it’s Sally Rooney at her finest and most controlled . . . To discount the recurrence of certain themes and characterizations across her novels as unoriginal is to overlook the profundity of this novel . . . Again and again, Rooney’s novels pose questions about what love is and how it shapes our lives . . . If
Intermezzo is any indication, the author’s literary finesse grows with each new novel.”
―Cait O’Neill, Chicago Review of Books

“Rooney zooms in on these brothers with
prose that is precise and rhythmic, her long paragraphs transmitting the winding nature of their inner worlds, how thoughts repeat and morph and collide . . . It’s simple and yet complex; meticulous but alive; funny but deeply sad. It’s Sally Rooney’s best novel yet.”
―Mari Cohen, Jewish Currents

“There are moments of real poignancy and the two men’s hurt and grief, close to the surface, is often painful to read . . . This feels like a more mature novel―and in my opinion, [Rooney’s] best yet.
There’s more introspection here, more vulnerability from the characters, and this allows a greater connection . . . Tender and true.”
―Joanne Finney, Good Housekeeping

“Rooney proves that she can cover more ground than what the literary world expects from her . . .
Intermezzo is a powerful rejoinder to Rooney’s skeptics.”
―Tisya Mavuram, The American Prospect

Intermezzo, [Rooney’s] fourth novel, is her most fully developed and moving yet . . . Intermezzo propels you to its well-earned, moving climax with nary a false move.”
―Heller McAlpin, NPR

“Kaleidoscopically beautiful and intimately human . . .
To read a Sally Rooney novel is to grip humanity in the palm of your hand, and Intermezzo is no different.”
―Clare Mulroy, USA Today

“Figuring out how to coexist, perhaps even how to love each other, will be the primary challenge [Peter and Ivan] face in
Intermezzo. Their relationship is a microcosm of the novel’s interest in learning to live with difference―not just the kind that exists between individuals but also the warring factions that exist within each of them. And, of course, the most fundamental difference of all: that of life versus death.”
―Jess Bergman, The Nation

“In her
astutely intimate style, Rooney wades through the convoluted emotions that follow tragedy: certainly heartache, but also relief and longing, guilt and joy, all on the cusp of transformation . . . She teases out near-ruptured emotions never fully felt by the conscience, untethering them from reality for our voyeuristic pleasure . . . In the tense, messy contradictions of communal grief, Rooney weaves together beautiful whole cloth.”
―Curtis Yee, Associated Press

“What’s fascinating about Rooney’s more recent attempts is
how attuned she is to every social tightrope that constrains what we might have imagined would be free adulthood . . . There’s something brilliant and refreshing in Rooney’s choice to follow the private love affairs of two siblings once so closely connected . . . It’s a pleasure, this time, to get under the skin and into the compassionate private realities of these brothers who misperceive each other as villains.”
―Lillian Fishman, The Washington Post

Wise, resonant and witty . . . There is so much restraint and melancholy profundity in her prose that when she allows the flood gates to open, the parched reader is willing to be swept out to sea . . . Rooney has an exquisite perceptiveness and a zest for keeping us reading . . . Intermezzo wears its heart on its sleeve.”
―Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“The formal experiments are never idle but always at the service of a desire for emotional precision, for a more satisfactory rendering of the boundless complexity of the inner life . . . It is no small part of Rooney’s achievement in her latest novel that she portrays physical desire with tact and tenderness, without giving in to soft-focus sentimentalism . . . This
bold, adventurous and captivating novel is a major addition to a body of work that never fails to surprise and engage.”
―Michael Cronin, The Irish Times

Intermezzo is exquisite . . . It’s as tender and lovely as you could ask for, and beneath the elegant rise and fall of Rooney’s oceanic sentences, the waters go deep.”
―Constance Grady, Vox

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 . . . She leans fully into her gifts here: more characters, more complication, ‘more life,’ as Margaret thinks . . . Is there a better novelist at work right now?
―Anthony Cummins, The Observer

“That divide between what you believe and how you behave is one of the great themes of
Intermezzo . . . This is new and deeper territory for Rooney . . . Intermezzo is in many ways a more truthful book . . . The work of an artist who is continually trying out new techniques and continually growing.”
―Laura Miller, Slate

“[Rooney’s] most mature and moving book to date . . .
I read it in a state of rapture―and relief. By rediscovering what the one thing the novel uniquely excels at―inwardness―Rooney shows she can tune into her characters’ thoughts and catch them in the act of realising important things about themselves. Her work is much better for it.”
―Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Sunday Times

“Something big has shifted here . . .
[Rooney] has also set out to probe something deeper and more enduring, more universally human: grief itself . . . The way she supplies tidy closure, even as she subverts it, is a testament to her skill as a novelist.”
―Amy Weiss-Meyer, The Atlantic

Intermezzo reaffirms Rooney’s ability to capture the thrill and desperation of blooming romance, and to portray a microcosm of human existence with precision and insight.”
―Michelle Cyca, The Globe and Mail

“On finishing,
I reflected: what would it be to hold a book with a soul? I felt I had. I felt changed, and utterly the same, the way it feels to read Larkin, or Tolstoy; felt, that for the time spent reading Intermezzo, I had gone more deeply into the world, reattuned to its networked thrum of pleasures, miseries, worries, and erotics that I might already have been aware of―but dully . . . We see Sally Rooney discovering the full potential of her prowess: to attend finely to the world around her, to find love in its every complexity having done so, to offer those findings sincerely to others.”
―Jo Hamya, The Independent

“I take this to be the modest provocation of Rooney’s novels: the idea that love is real precisely because it is a product, one created by social conventions, by market forces, by systems of violence, and, behind all of this, by human beings themselves . . . In recent years, Rooney has flirted with the idea that the novel, by asking us to love fictional people that will ‘never love us in return,’ provides readers with a unique opportunity to practice a kind of love for one’s fellow man.”
―Andrea Long Chu, New York

Her gifts are clear: writing realistic dialogue and creating believable characters; narrative economy and instinctive pacing; capturing the way we live as it moves and changes; depicting emotion. She has a particularly deft sense of the writer’s role in a political landscape . . . Rooney’s novels stand for the notion that ordinary people should also be allowed the tumults and comforts of an emotional life, along with a sense that their existence is important because it is precious to the people they love.”
―Joanna Biggs, London Review of Books

“On the one hand,
Intermezzo is a knotted, romantic melodrama that offers extensive insight into the rattled neuroses and intimate desires of its characters along with a substantial array of steamy love scenes. On the other hand, it’s a layered book about the displacement of grief and the noise of modern life. In both respects, Rooney skillfully keeps her finger on the pulse of characters . . . Intermezzo is studded with shimmering moments of pastoral stillness.”
―Lauren LeBlanc, The Boston Globe

“[Rooney] examines modern love in all its glory and friction . . . Rooney's pared-back and realistic style has also evolved, with precise dialogues dipping into vivid, internal monologues.”
―Clara Lalanne, Barron’s

“For all the griefs and regrets in [
Intermezzo], all the misreadings and mistakes, as the characters try to figure out what they feel, we never lose sight of their capacity for love. If Rooney’s work has a guiding belief, I think it’s something such as this: no one is ever truly alone. Some might see that as obvious, a truism. Others would call it a reason to live.”
―Cal Revely-Calder, The Telegraph

“Mature and profound,
Intermezzo feels like a culmination of everything she has done before . . . A melancholic marvel; what is easily her best novel yet.”
―Anna Bonet, iNews

“[Rooney’s] most ambitious book yet, with a notable change in style . . . Though [
Intermezzo] circles Rooney’s familiar themes―sex and romance, female illness, former whiz kids facing adult irrelevance―the work is deeper and more tender.”
―Erin Somers, Air Mail

Intermezzo is an accomplished continuation of the writing that made Rooney a global phenomenon. It’s also more philosophically ambitious, stylistically varied, disturbing at times and altogether stranger.”
―Alexandra Harris, The Guardian

Intermezzo sees Rooney return to exceptional form with a novel as clever as her 2017 debut Conversations with Friends, and as engrossing as its 2018 follow-up Normal People . . . Love, as Rooney depicts it here, is a moral proposition, complete with obligations for solicitude and responsibility.”
―Shahidha Bari, Financial Times

Intermezzo is scattered with the little gifts of psychological and emotional observation that are the most cherishable aspects of Rooney’s talent.”
―James Marriott, The Times

“Fascinating and delicate . . . The sheer amount of human relationships and dynamics, like in all of her previous novels, gives a wide range of conversations and thoughtful dialogues. Readers will want to read it again and again to catch every sly nuance.”
―Abby Sliva, The Minnesota Star Tribune

“Come for the romance; stay for the meaning of life, of which, of course, love is a fundamental part.”
―Martin Doyle, The Irish Times

“The arrival of a new Sally Rooney novel is always cause for celebration; there is simply no other novelist chronicling the early adulthood of disaffected youth in the 21st century with more care and compassion . . . In
Intermezzo she broadens her scope and diverts from the casually complex conversational tone . . . The book rewards the effort.”
―Chloe Schama, Vogue

“Stylistically daring, emotionally explosive, and endlessly wise, this is Rooney’s best work yet.”
Charley Burlock, Oprah Daily (Best of Fall)

“[
Intermezzo] might be her best yet: a tale of depth and grand sweep, an understated study of characters caught circling the margin of some great and unknown thing, and a diversion of pure enjoyment, too. Rooney’s title tells us these brothers, in their love and fury for one another, are at an in-between moment, as she carefully, brilliantly writes them out of it.”
Booklist (starred review)

“Bestseller Rooney returns with
a boldly experimental and emotionally devastating story of estrangement . . . The novel’s deliberate pacing veers from the propulsiveness of Normal People and the deep character work contrasts with the topicality of Beautiful World, but in many ways this feels like Rooney’s most fully realized work, especially as she channels the modernist styles of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf . . . Even the author’s skeptics are liable to be swept away by this novel’s forceful currents of feeling.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Rooney has struck
a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at―sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues―with newer moves . . . The characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real . . . Her grandmaster status remains intact.”
Kirkus Reviews

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. She also contributed to the writing and production of the Hulu/BBC television adaptation of Normal People.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 24, 2024)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374602638
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374602635
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.8 x 1.45 x 8.55 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 11,522 ratings

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Sally Rooney
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SALLY ROONEY was born in the west of Ireland in 1991. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta and The London Review of Books. Winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2017, she is the author of Conversations with Friends and the editor of the Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
11,522 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the story engaging and well-written. They appreciate the characters' depth and development. The book is described as heartfelt, compassionate, and thought-provoking. Readers praise the pacing and nuanced details. However, some feel the writing style is too simple and straightforward.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

36 customers mention "Story quality"27 positive9 negative

Customers find the story engaging and powerful. They appreciate the narrative that explores both internal thoughts and external actions and deeds. The book explores the messiness of life and family, with relatable relationships and philosophical meditations on love.

"...is present in this book, which is a beautiful narrative of both internal thoughts and feelings and external actions and deeds, especially sexual..." Read more

"...The story is somewhat compelling, but not always convincing...." Read more

"...Love is love is love❤️" Read more

"...The Ivan chapters are good. The Peter chapters grow tiresome...." Read more

32 customers mention "Readability"32 positive0 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and well-written. They describe it as Rooney's best work since Normal People. The book is of good quality, with no bent edges or pages missing.

"...I love this book and I especially love the ending whose resolution of the storyline was as powerful and meaningful as the endings of Shakespeare's..." Read more

"Definitely has momentum as a novel. The Ivan chapters are good. The Peter chapters grow tiresome...." Read more

"I could not stop reading this book, I read it in one day, and late into the night...." Read more

"This has been one of the truly real books I have read in such a long time...." Read more

18 customers mention "Character development"13 positive5 negative

Customers enjoy the engaging characters.

"...I even dream about the sentences in the book. I love all the characters she builds. You feel your heart is tightened and aching for all of them...." Read more

"...Love in all its forms gets explained and detailed through its characters...." Read more

"...Characters were well developed, enjoyed the story but it was a slog" Read more

"...But - too long. Should have tightened it up - endless dithering between the characters." Read more

17 customers mention "Thought provoking"13 positive4 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking and insightful. They describe it as a fascinating read that provides meaningful insights into thoughts, doubts, and insecurities. The book is described as intelligent, real, and compassionate, with a flow that makes you understand each point of view.

"...Have no fear, gentle readers; when you reach the end of this wonderful book, you will be uplifted and you will feel that the hours spent on this..." Read more

"...But then it flows and you feel like you really understand each point of view. I am definitely going to read more Sally Rooney books!" Read more

"...I really enjoyed it! It's thought provoking and tender!..." Read more

"I totally became involved in the characters’ lives. Much food for personal thought." Read more

16 customers mention "Heartfeltness"16 positive0 negative

Customers find the book heartfelt and compassionate. They say it conveys feelings, frustrations, disappointments, and a beautiful perspective on grief and human relationships. The characters engage readers and draw them in to care for them wholeheartedly.

"...I really enjoyed it! It's thought provoking and tender!..." Read more

"...I love all the characters she builds. You feel your heart is tightened and aching for all of them. The preciousness of love, tenderness, forgiveness...." Read more

"...the author manages to plunge into the minds of both brothers, conveying their feelings, frustrations, disappointments, guilt, and a different way of..." Read more

"...anyone in your life who is neurodivergent, this book will crack your heart wide open and do a number on you in the best, hardest, and most beautiful..." Read more

11 customers mention "Pacing"8 positive3 negative

Customers find the book's pacing engaging. They say it has momentum as a novel and is easy to follow. The writing format is described as genius and unique, making it difficult to put down.

"Definitely has momentum as a novel. The Ivan chapters are good. The Peter chapters grow tiresome...." Read more

"...Additionally, the writing format is genius and complicated and so unique. Couldn’t love this book more if I tried." Read more

"...It’s choppy, staccato, train of thought, often incoherent - more so for the Peter POV chapters than the ones that are Ivan or Margaret driven...." Read more

"...unusual prose style and I found it both extraordinarily perceptive and moving." Read more

5 customers mention "Detail"5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's attention to detail. They find the relationships nuanced and clear, with Rooney highlighting both the intricacies and simplicities. The intermezzo is described as incredible, heartbreaking, and heartwarming at the same time.

"What a book Sally Rooney wrote! Intermezzo is so incredible so heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time...." Read more

"Rooney describes complicated emotions and relationships with great nuance and clarity, amazingly well...." Read more

"...In wonderful detail, the novel shares the brothers' introspection about themselves, their relationship with each other, and their efforts to develop..." Read more

"...There are intricacies Rooney highlights, but also the simplicities that rudely stare us in the face. We miss those are gone. We miss our dog...." Read more

42 customers mention "Writing style"25 positive17 negative

Customers have different views on the writing style. Some find it stunning and serious, praising the author's skill. Others find it hard to get the hang of at first, with boring verbiage and nonsensical language. There are also complaints about incomplete sentences and extra words that don't add up.

"...She is indeed a serious writer, and "Intermezzo" is vivid proof of that...." Read more

"...Initially, the writing style was a little hard to get the hang of— who is saying what? What are thoughts and what’s being said out loud...." Read more

"...I thought that true here as well. I think the writing is usually very good, the storylines too...." Read more

"...To discover the writing so pitch perfect and a story I could believe, was a true breath of fresh air...." Read more

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2024
    In her 2022 T.S. Eliot lecture at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on the centenary of the publication of James Joyce's "Ulysses", Sally Rooney traced the origins of the novel in English back to women, not men, writing in the 18th century. This wonderfully erudite lecture published in the Paris Review is available online, and I recommend it to the attention of those who think Ms. Rooney is not a " serious" writer. She is indeed a serious writer, and "Intermezzo" is vivid proof of that. She said in an interview that she had learned much from the novels of Jane Austen and Henry James. That same moral seriousness is present in this book, which is a beautiful narrative of both internal thoughts and feelings and external actions and deeds, especially sexual deeds, in the interlinked lives of 2 brothers and 3 women in their lives. Sally Rooney used the term " relational novel" to describe books centered on the connections men and women sometimes succeed and sometimes fail to establish between each other. She then went on to show that "Ulysses" is such a relational novel. Her novel recalls not only Joyce but also Virginia Woolf. If you like the writers I have mentioned, you will love "Intermezzo".

    In a recent interview with the New York Times, Sally Rooney was asked about "big" issues like climate change and why she didn't focus on such topics rather than the relationships of Irish millenials in 21st century Dublin. (This is NOT an American novel please, and its characters and sensitivities are thoroughly Irish.) Ms. Rooney said that yes these larger issues are important, but that people had to live and needed a reason to live and their connections with other people on the micro not the macro scale provide them with hope and motivation to live. I love this book and I especially love the ending whose resolution of the storyline was as powerful and meaningful as the endings of Shakespeare's beautiful romantic comedies like "A Midsummer Night's Dream". The *end* of a story is the most important part. What a dreadful feeling when the author drops the ball at this crucial moment. Have no fear, gentle readers; when you reach the end of this wonderful book, you will be uplifted and you will feel that the hours spent on this reading journey have been well worth your valuable time.
    50 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2025
    This is my first read of any Rooney novel. I don't know her normal subject matter (if she has one) or if this is her normal writing style. That took a while for me to get used to. It’s choppy, staccato, train of thought, often incoherent - more so for the Peter POV chapters than the ones that are Ivan or Margaret driven. The lack of quotation marks challenges the readers on who is saying what (vs thinking) and to whom.

    The story is somewhat compelling, but not always convincing. While Rooney has the younger brother, Ivan, as neurodivergent and on the spectrum, she doesn't make the same assessment about Peter (the older brother), which could be a truism. But he's a man in need of mental health services. Ivan seems more the mature grown-up one and his dialogue rarely shows signs of the divergent status he's made out to be in the beginning.

    Sometimes the writing goes into romance novel territory, which is not appealing to me. Again, first Rooney I've read, so maybe that's her style. And as with so many novels, especially the 400+ pagers, everything usually wraps up far too easily and neatly. Sometimes with zero hurdles or conflict. I thought that true here as well.

    I think the writing is usually very good, the storylines too. I think the grief the characters are experiencing comes out far too late, but that's me. If you can work with the writing style, I think you won't struggle with the length of the book.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2024
    Definitely has momentum as a novel. The Ivan chapters are good. The Peter chapters grow tiresome. Rooney’s pretentious use of stream-of-conscious narration combined with the gimmicky lack of quotation marks—a tiresome trend I hope disappears from fiction—makes Peter’s POV needlessly confusing and confused. Was that a thought or dialogue you just read? Prose shouldn’t be a puzzlebox to be solved.
    29 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2025
    I could not stop reading this book, I read it in one day, and late into the night. Initially, the writing style was a little hard to get the hang of— who is saying what? What are thoughts and what’s being said out loud. But then, I got into the groove, and it makes total sense. I only add this because initially I only started reading this because it’s a book club selection. And I thought— oh no, I gotta slog thru this? But then it flows and you feel like you really understand each point of view. I am definitely going to read more Sally Rooney books!
    5 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2025
    We're reading Intermezzo for our book club!
    I really enjoyed it! It's thought provoking and tender! If traditional relationships worked there wouldn't be so many dysfunctional family relationships. Love is love is love❤️
  • Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2025
    This has been one of the truly real books I have read in such a long time. Not wanting it to end, fearful for the sensibilities of all the characters and so worried that something dreadful might happen. To discover the writing so pitch perfect and a story I could believe, was a true breath of fresh air. The narrative thread courses through my psyche even now. I will remember this one for a very long time.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2024
    One of the best novels I've ever read, for my particular tastes. It is intelligent, real, and compassionate. The main characters are alive and so deeply drawn that we really inhabit their conscious (and subconscious) lives. Rooney has the amazing ability to let us feel just what they are feeling, through dramatic ups and downs, even when they're barely aware of what they're feeling. There's never a false or sentimental note amidst lots of emotions. The sex scenes are erotic but not gratuitous; they reveal as much about the relationships as the other scenes. The whole tone is grown up but innocent, complicated but warm-hearted, serious but humorous. Won't soon be surpassed. Oh yes, the themes: as reviewers have said, it's about grief, family, time, relationships ... but truly the themes are everyone's fundamental vulnerability and the healing power of love.
    26 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Metztli
    5.0 out of 5 stars De lo mejor de la autora
    Reviewed in Mexico on January 11, 2025
    De las mejores historias escritas por Sally
  • Vlad Thelad
    5.0 out of 5 stars Reaching new heights
    Reviewed in Canada on November 8, 2024
    Literary success is filled with first time wonders, say an outstanding novel, followed by never-quite-as-good second, third or more works. Sally Rooney’s first two novels shattered this premise as they were both excellent. The third, alas, was not. Then comes this one, Intermezzo, and I picked it up with a bit of scepticism as promotional great reviews usually accompany the new releases of already established bestseller authors. Well, not only is this book on par with her first two, but it also reaches new heights as Rooney revisits already familiar elements of the lives of Irish millennials through a fascinating host of characters. This time she adds a more experimental prose to her already powerful arsenal of describing and narrating tools, resulting in a vivid, engaging, and compelling book. As the cliché goes, it is hard to put this one down.
  • Rachele T
    5.0 out of 5 stars Forse il miglior libro di Sally Rooney
    Reviewed in Italy on January 30, 2025
    Sally Rooney deve essere letta in inglese. Non posso immaginare nessuno dei suoi libri scritti in italiano.

    Sono quasi sempre parole semplici e frasi brevi. Ma non questo. Con questo libro penso che si sia superata e finalmente stia diventando una scrittrice a tutto tondo. I temi sono più profondi dei precedenti libri, e i personaggi ancora più melodrammatici e realistici.

    Unica pecca, il libro è arrivato un po' "sporco" c'erano grosse ditate sulla copertina e quelli che all'apparenza sembrano graffi.
  • Victoria Olivera Jurjo
    5.0 out of 5 stars Buena calidad
    Reviewed in Spain on January 17, 2025
    Portada preciosa, me esta gustando
  • Rebecca
    5.0 out of 5 stars A sensational read!
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2024
    I love love loved both ‘Normal People‘ and ‘Conversations with Friends‘ but didn’t get on all that well with ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You‘ so was a little apprehensive going into Sally Rooney’s latest novel, ‘Intermezzo’.

    I needn’t have worried, because oh my goodness, I loved it!

    I read this book a few months ago and am only just getting round to reviewing, but it’s stuck with me so well since then, which is always a sign of a good read!

    The book focusses on two men, brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek. Peter is 30 something, successfully and competently working in Dublin as a lawyer. Ivan is 22, socially awkward, a reserved chess prodigy. Following their father’s death, the brothers take different paths in their grief, navigating a world without the man who raised them. With a large 10 year gap between the two, this is the story of them trying to understand one another, perhaps for the first time in their lives. The novel that plays out is, in my opinion, the most complex of plots in a Rooney book so far.

    “No one is perfect. Sometimes you need people to be perfect and they can’t be and you hate them forever for not being even though it isn’t their fault and it’s not yours either. You just needed something they didn’t have in them to give you.”

    Switching between points of view throughout, I found it really interesting how Rooney chose different writing styles for each character, reflecting their personalities. Ivan’s world is chess and Rooney cleverly uses the game as a metaphor for the internal struggles that her characters face, mirroring their emotional battles and a desire to win. His chapters are more clipped, more fragmented than his brother’s, whose chapters seemed a little more familiar to Rooney’s usual style.

    A more mature read than her other work, both men’s lives and personalities are explored deeply and the depiction of sibling love and rivalry was written so accurately that you could believe these were real people. Both brothers are seeking success and happiness, and their deep, long, internal monologues really made me, as the reader, appreciate Rooney’s talent in confronting feelings of grief and despair without making this a sad and dreary read. It’s so interesting to consider grief beyond death… grief for things that didn’t happen, couldn’t happen, the life we wanted and the life we got.

    Overall rating: With themes of brotherhood, grief, despair and loneliness, Sally Rooney’s latest novel, ‘Intermezzo’ is a sensational read – 5 stars!