Intermezzo by Rooney Sally

Intermezzo

In the weeks after their father's death, two brothers attempt to navigate a world that no longer contains him—and find themselves estranged in ways they can barely name. Peter, a successful Dublin lawyer in his thirties, copes by medicating himself into sleep and juggling impossible emotional obligations: his enduring love for Sylvia, whose chronic pain keeps them suspended in longing, and his entanglement with Naomi, a college student for whom life is a performance and escape.

Ivan, his younger brother by a decade, is a competitive chess prodigy whose promising career has stalled. Socially awkward and withdrawn, he meets Margaret—a 36-year-old recently divorced woman emerging from a turbulent marriage—at a chess exhibition. Their connection is immediate, intense, and discreet; for Ivan, it becomes a way to feel alive in his grief. For Margaret, it awakens something she thought was lost.

Sally Rooney's fourth novel is a profound meditation on sibling bonds, male vulnerability, and the architecture of desire across age, class, and circumstance. At 448 pages, Intermezzo deepens Rooney's examination of how we fail to love well, and how love persists anyway—in the tender gaps between what we want and what we can admit to ourselves we deserve.

Perfect for readers who loved Normal People and Beautifully Ordinary for their intimate psychological portraiture and moral complexity.

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Date Published: 22/05/2025

ISBN: 9780571365487

Number of pages: 432

Binding:

• Paperback

Book genres:

• Literature
• Family
• Drama
• Romance

Target audience:

• Adults