Intermezzo is one of my favorite Rooney novels yet, exploring complicated families, grief, unconventional relationships, forgiveness, and possibilities that once seemed impossible.
Peter Koubek is a thirtysomething attorney in Dublin, unshakeable, unsentimental, and highly successful. He's struggling to maintain two relationships--with Naomi, a playful and uninhibited younger woman, and with his intellectual and caring first love, Sylvia, who is coping with chronic pain and disability since a terrible accident a decade ago.
Ivan Koubek is ten years younger, a competitive chess player, a loner, and, he has always thought, his brother's Peter's opposite.
In the wake of their father's death, each brother reels from the loss in his own way. They clash, hurt each other deeply, and wonder if they can ever reconcile.
The men's methods of coping with their grief often test the line between hopelessness and possibility. Each of their romantic relationships is unconventional, and various players involved struggle to let go of societal expectations in favor or what feels real and meaningful and what makes them happy. Through it all, both Ivan and Peter are repeatedly forced to consider their place in the world and what the future might hold.
The choppy sentences and phrases that make up Peter's point of view were initially difficult for me to adjust to, but Ivan's thoughtful, measured viewpoint balanced it out. Along with the brothers' divergent paths forward after loss, their distinct voices--one machine-gun-like, one softly pensive--emphasized that while appearances might suggest that the older, responsible lawyer brother might be more steady than the just-out-of-college, contract-worker brother who feels socially awkward and is doubting his chess prowess after having built his young life around the pursuit, the opposite is often the case.
I'm such a greedy reader, it's been a while since I've slowed down to savor a book the way I felt compelled to do while reading Intermezzo. I was invested in the characters and their messy methods of coming to terms with death and with seizing control of their own lives.
The prose in Intermezzo is gorgeous and often feels poetic--in fact, many of the notes in the back matter credit poems as the source of some of the references on these pages.
I'd love to hear your Bossy thoughts about this book!
Rooney is also the author of Normal People, Conversations with Friends, and Beautiful World, Where Are You.
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