Sally Rooney, the beloved Irish author, has perfected the art of melancholy and adding nuances to seemingly mundane, human experiences. Rooney’s past novels “Normal People”, “Conversations with Friends”, and “Beautiful World, Where Are You” all explore varying intricate relationships between characters. She has explored romance and friendship, but with her upcoming novel “Intermezzo”, to be released this September, Rooney will now be exploring the complexity of family dynamics.
Credit: Hulu Normal People
“Intermezzo” explores the relationship and lives between two brothers, Ivan and Peter Koubek. Peter is a successful, competent, thirty-something lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is a twenty-two year old competitive chess player. Unlike his brother, Ivan is a loner and has always viewed himself as socially awkward. In the wake of their father’s death, Peter medicates himself to sleep and has found himself struggling between his relationships with two contrasting women–Sylvia, his first love, and Naomi, a college student who doesn’t take life too seriously. For Ivan, he meets an older woman, Margaret, who his life becomes promptly intertwined with. In this novel, Rooney explores themes of grief, love, heartache, bittersweet possibility, and family.
Faber Books, her British publisher, shared the novel’s opening lines.
“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.”
Sally Rooney, “Intermezzo”
In an interview published by the Associated Press, Rooney shared her thoughts on the novel, stating, “Since I began work on this novel several years ago, its characters and their relationships have become an important part of my life. I hope that I’ve done them some justice in writing the book, and that they might find a place in the lives of readers too.”
Sally Rooney’s novels have touched the souls of readers since her debut of “Conversations with Friends” in 2017. The unabashed vulnerability of the characters as well as their relatable imperfections are what cause her book releases to be so widely anticipated. I know that I will be waiting for any new updates about “Intermezzo” and will be impatiently waiting to pick up a copy on September 24th!