“Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney

As a fan of Sally Rooney, I got “Intermezzo” as soon as I saw it coming out in print. She has been named as one of the best writers of this generation and after reading “Conversations with Friends” and “Normal People”, I was intrigued to get my hands on “Intermezzo”.

I really liked the book. It was probably not the best book that I read this year but it was one of the best. “Intermezzo” focuses on two brothers, Peter, a successful human rights lawyer in his 30s in Dublin, and Ivan, a chess player in his 20s and how they both deal with the aftermath of their dad’s passing away.

“The event is over, the event has been overcome, and yet the loss is only beginning. Every day, it grows deeper, more and more is forgotten, less and less really known for certain. And nothing will ever bring his father back from the realm of memory int the reassuringly concrete world of material fact, tangible and specific fact: and how, how is it possible to accept this, or even to understand what it means?“

They are both taken over by grief but in different ways. Peter is stuck between two women – the love of his life Sylvia who suffered injuries in an accident and can not have sexual relationships anymore but with whom he feels intellectually stimulated and equal and Naomi, a 20-year-old student who satisfies his desires but does not match his intelligence. Ivan, on the other hand, has fallen in love with much older Margaret and finally feels accepted for the first time in his life. As they both navigate grief and loss, we see their relationships tumble and take new turns.

The reason why I like Sally Rooney is that I think she is extremely masterful at noting human emotions and feelings and creating complex archetypes. Sometimes you might feel weird or out of place but then you see a character in a book and you feel truly seen for the first time. That is the true magic of Sally Rooney.

Also her writing is so flowy and eloquent. Here are some of my favourite quotes:

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“Life itself, he thinks, every moment of life, is a precious and beautiful as any game of chess ever played, if only you know how to live.”

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“The inexchangeable pleasure of her conversation. Just to walk the streets saying things, and talking, purely to amuse and please one another, to make each other stupidly laugh, for no further accomplishment, no higher purpose, to let their words rise and disperse forever in the damp brackish air.”

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“How often in his life he has found himself a frustrated observer of apparently impenetrable systems, watching other people participate effortlessly in structures he can find no way to enter or even understand. So often that it’s practically baseline, just normal existence for him. And this is not only due to the irrational nature of other people, and the consequent irrationality of the rules and processes they devise; it’s due to Ivan himself, his fundamental unsuitedness to life. He knows this. He feels himself to have been formed, somehow, with something other than life in mind. He has his good qualities, kind of, but none of them have much to do with living in the world that he actually lives in, the only world that can be said in a fairly real way to exist.”

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Finally, somehow I feel like she managed to sum up my parenting motto pretty well:

“I feel like if I created a new human being out of nothing, I would be very happy with them. Just that they were alive even. You know, that’s my dad’s attitude. Or it was. He was always happy with us.”

It is a great book! Give it a read.