ouchouchouchouchouch. this book hurt.

god i don’t even know where to start with this review.

for one, this book was HARD. as in emotionally. having a dead dad and reading this……. Pain. literally started sobbing reading ivan talking to margaret on the phone about his dad. too relatable fuck you sally rooney (/j she ate this up). 

usually i’m not the biggest fan of character-driven novels, as i find there are no stakes and tension. and yeah i found that an issue here too i guess. but fuck can sally rooney write characters well. this is my first book of hers so my expectations were pretty all over the place, but i did not expect such superb character writing. like at some points i felt like i had been transported into someone else’s life, watching their days from their eyes. i don’t think in all my reading life i have read characters with such depth as ivan and peter. holy shit.

also side note but i feel like anyone reading this should know that the entire time reading this i imagined ivan as oliver quick from saltburn (obv before he starts licking bathtub water). if this was ever turned into a movie adaptation barry keoghan would devour the role (although ntm for hurting my girl sabrina).

this review has gotten away from me.

like this book.

usually i also often despise stream of consciousness books!!! but!!!! rooney yet again leaves no crumbs!!!! it is like watching a car crash happen right in front of you for 442 pages and you can’t look away because you are oddly mesmerised by the sheer magnitude of what is happening. Yeah. that’s intermezzo in a nutshell.

also how can i not shout out my three homegirls — margaret, sylvia & naomi. i’ll be real and say i didn’t like naomi, and even by the end she felt a bit one-note, but that could be some meta-commentary on how peter views the women in his life blah blah blah. sylvia had a bit more depth, what with her chronic pain (spoonies rise up!!!) and her life outside of peter, and was by far the most interesting out of the main female cast. margaret was… also a bit boring? she also felt quite repetitive with her dialogue and inner thoughts at times, especially surrounding her relationship with ivan. like yeah the age gap isn’t small but homegirl it’s not like ur 78 and ivan is 19 like. take a xanax like ol peter boy over here.

i don’t really know what else to add. this book is a fever dream. i honestly didn’t want to pick this up for dread of what i would encounter, but once i started reading i couldn’t peel my eyes away. the book had some issues for me personally, but they weren’t due to the actual writing being bad or anything, just preferences. like i didn’t mind the dialogue choice but what i did mind is the no plot no tension insanely philosophical thoughts appearing out of thin air. although if you asked me what my favourite parts of this book were i’d have to say the insanely philosophical thoughts appearing out of thin air.

this book is a paradox for me