Intermezzo is a 2024 novel by Sally Rooney that explores the intricate dynamics of grief, love, and family, delving into the ways in which these emotions intertwine and shape the lives of the characters.
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Book Blurb
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.
About the Author
Sally Rooney is an Irish author known for her critically acclaimed novels exploring themes of youth, love, and societal dynamics.
Born in County Mayo, Ireland, Sally Rooney went on to study English literature at Trinity College Dublin. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Dublin Review, The White Review, The Stinging Fly, and the Winter Pages anthology.
Her debut novel, Conversations with Friends, received widespread praise for its insightful portrayal of relationships and millennial life.
Not only has she written New York Times bestselling books, Sally Rooney was also the editor of the Stinging Fly in 2018 and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library from 2019 to 2020.
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