It all makes for an interesting and believable delve
into family dynamics. –(Review by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The
Witness)
Sally Rooney is one of the most celebrated of contemporary Irish writers, and here she has moved from her usual plotting of romantic tangles – though there are plenty of those in Intermezzo – to focus mainly on a relationship between siblings.
The siblings in question are Peter, a seemingly successful Dublin lawyer, and his much younger – by a decade – brother Ivan, a potential chess genius.
Their father has just died, and the brothers are grieving, not that it seems to bring them any closer to each other.
Peter is entangled with two women. Naomi is a much younger student who happily takes his money and often mocks him, while his first love, Sylvia, is a lecturer who has suffered some terrible injury that is never fully explained but that has ended their sex life, frustrating them both. Ivan meanwhile has met Margaret, some 14 or so years his senior. The pair embark on an affair which gives them both the pleasure and comfort they need. But Peter, somewhat hypocritically, is horrified by the age gap between them, worsening the fraternal friction.
Intermezzo is a character-driven rather than plot-driven novel. Rooney’s trademark style is to eschew quotation marks and write in long passages of speech, thought and action without clear breaks between them. Of course, this is how we function in real life – thinking, saying and doing all at the same time - and Rooney can make it work, though, maybe because I am an ageing grammar nerd, it is not an approach I particularly care for. However, it is often effective.
The two men, Peter and Ivan, are the most fully developed characters, and most of the action is seen through them. Sylvia remains enigmatic and Naomi, while lively and engaging, never seems a good match for Peter and her motivations are not always clear. Rooney develops Margaret a little more, allowing her to be proactive rather than reactive, and she and Ivan are much the most appealing characters in the group.
Peter and Ivan rarely meet face to face, and when they do, it is usually a disaster. But their relationship is the central focus of the novel, giving us insights into their childhood and how their present difficulties stem from what happened there. In the course of the novel they have to work through their past resentments and their present grief to reach some kind of peace. It all makes for an interesting and believable delve into family dynamics. - Margaret von Klemperer
Intermezzo is published by Faber & Faber
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