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A review by lindseylitlivres
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
5.0
Buckle up. It's a long review. I have way too many thoughts.
tl;dr "Intermezzo" was lovely and messy and heartbreaking and relatable and frustrating and hopeful. Her best work. Easy 5 ⭐️.
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Sally Rooney, you did it again. Brava!
"Intermezzo" has all the Sally Rooney classics:
- Complicated love stories with broken/emotionally unavailable people
- Bad communicators
- Emotional infidelity
- The millennial mindset of existential dread coupled with the unbearable weight of the world falling apart
- Desire to be normal
- Resentment of conformity
- Desperation for unconditional love
- Loneliness and despair
- Lots (un)expected sex scenes
- No quotation marks
And a bunch of new material:
- Male protagonists
- Oedipus complexes but with brothers?
- Eventual conflict resolution (once rock bottom is hit)
- Characters that don't give up on each other
- A protagonist you would raze the world for (Ivan, of course)
I tried to chunk up my ramblings a bit; otherwise, they'd be more scattered than they already are:
-
WRITING STYLE
If you read "Beautiful World, Where Are You," you'll be somewhat familiar with the narrative of "Intermezzo." Some chapters are split off and told through Ivan+Margaret's POVs, and the others are told through Peter's. The I+M chapters the flow is more direct and linear. Peter's chapters - probably related to his alcohol and drug use - sound more like random albeit poetic thoughts that jump around - more staccato to Margaret's legato and Ivan's…I don't know, interspersed accents and dynamics?
I keep thinking about why the story wasn't told through Sylvia's or Naomi's POV, but I have yet to form a concrete opinion on the matter (and have yet to read any other reviews). Maybe it was to signify that even though Peter is surrounded by people, he feels very alone? Either way, it did not take away from my enjoyment of the book.
GRIEF
To say this novel is about grief is both accurate and misleading. For Ivan and Peter, grief is always there but not always recognizable or manifested obviously.
In the beginning, we learn that Peter and Ivan had just lost their father, but it isn't always at the forefront of their thoughts compared to their romantic relationships and relationship with each other. Their grief is an undercurrent of constant loneliness and sadness punctuated by longing memories of their father. Or it's manifested as erratic behavior, and someone will point out to them that they're grieving, and that's why they're acting that way. When this happens, they seem so caught off guard and/or like someone ripped off their mask (à la any Scooby-Doo villain) to reveal that their grief is their dominant trait.
It's a side of grieving that isn't really addressed, at least not that I remember seeing. There are days that feel like everything is normal and days that feel like everything is falling apart. You find yourself hyper-fixating on what you can control (or what you think you can control) because the thing that's destroying you is something you can't get back.
TRUTH/FEELINGS
In Sally Rooney's other novels, you see this behavior as a common characteristic of Millennials: to feel plagued by everything wrong with the world and want to fix those problems, but when it comes to ourselves, we're helpless idiots. The end result is blowing things up in our heads, and in trying to spare others from our nonsense, we end up making things worse than if we just communicated like adults.
You get plenty of that in "Intermezzo," but she acknowledges this inner turmoil as truth/perceived truth (or facts vs. feelings). There's a logic puzzle section that serves as a metaphor for this.
Truth is not always static and can exist and change based on context, perspective, intent and empiricism. They're often seen in a vacuum, and we can forget that what is true for us is not true for others. Between the brothers, we see a lot of catastrophizing of hypothetical scenarios, blaming others for their pain, feeling gaslit by memory and feelings, and a lot of isolation. It adds more dimension to those emotionally stunted millennials
tl;dr "Intermezzo" was lovely and messy and heartbreaking and relatable and frustrating and hopeful. Her best work. Easy 5 ⭐️.
-
Sally Rooney, you did it again. Brava!
"Intermezzo" has all the Sally Rooney classics:
- Complicated love stories with broken/emotionally unavailable people
- Bad communicators
- Emotional infidelity
- The millennial mindset of existential dread coupled with the unbearable weight of the world falling apart
- Desire to be normal
- Resentment of conformity
- Desperation for unconditional love
- Loneliness and despair
- Lots (un)expected sex scenes
- No quotation marks
And a bunch of new material:
- Male protagonists
- Oedipus complexes but with brothers?
- Eventual conflict resolution (once rock bottom is hit)
- Characters that don't give up on each other
- A protagonist you would raze the world for (Ivan, of course)
I tried to chunk up my ramblings a bit; otherwise, they'd be more scattered than they already are:
-
WRITING STYLE
If you read "Beautiful World, Where Are You," you'll be somewhat familiar with the narrative of "Intermezzo." Some chapters are split off and told through Ivan+Margaret's POVs, and the others are told through Peter's. The I+M chapters the flow is more direct and linear. Peter's chapters - probably related to his alcohol and drug use - sound more like random albeit poetic thoughts that jump around - more staccato to Margaret's legato and Ivan's…I don't know, interspersed accents and dynamics?
I keep thinking about why the story wasn't told through Sylvia's or Naomi's POV, but I have yet to form a concrete opinion on the matter (and have yet to read any other reviews). Maybe it was to signify that even though Peter is surrounded by people, he feels very alone? Either way, it did not take away from my enjoyment of the book.
GRIEF
To say this novel is about grief is both accurate and misleading. For Ivan and Peter, grief is always there but not always recognizable or manifested obviously.
In the beginning, we learn that Peter and Ivan had just lost their father, but it isn't always at the forefront of their thoughts compared to their romantic relationships and relationship with each other. Their grief is an undercurrent of constant loneliness and sadness punctuated by longing memories of their father. Or it's manifested as erratic behavior, and someone will point out to them that they're grieving, and that's why they're acting that way. When this happens, they seem so caught off guard and/or like someone ripped off their mask (à la any Scooby-Doo villain) to reveal that their grief is their dominant trait.
It's a side of grieving that isn't really addressed, at least not that I remember seeing. There are days that feel like everything is normal and days that feel like everything is falling apart. You find yourself hyper-fixating on what you can control (or what you think you can control) because the thing that's destroying you is something you can't get back.
TRUTH/FEELINGS
In Sally Rooney's other novels, you see this behavior as a common characteristic of Millennials: to feel plagued by everything wrong with the world and want to fix those problems, but when it comes to ourselves, we're helpless idiots. The end result is blowing things up in our heads, and in trying to spare others from our nonsense, we end up making things worse than if we just communicated like adults.
You get plenty of that in "Intermezzo," but she acknowledges this inner turmoil as truth/perceived truth (or facts vs. feelings). There's a logic puzzle section that serves as a metaphor for this.
"The puzzle was about a liar who always lies, and the liar says: All my hats are green. Now, can we conclude that he has some hats?"
Truth is not always static and can exist and change based on context, perspective, intent and empiricism. They're often seen in a vacuum, and we can forget that what is true for us is not true for others. Between the brothers, we see a lot of catastrophizing of hypothetical scenarios, blaming others for their pain, feeling gaslit by memory and feelings, and a lot of isolation. It adds more dimension to those emotionally stunted millennials