Irish author Sally Rooney has become one of the most influential writers of the decade with her steady release of bestselling novels. Her books including Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) have been collectively coined the “Rooneyverse.” In 2022, her success landed her a spot among Time Magazine‘s 100 most influential individuals in global culture. Three years since Beautiful World, Where Are You, readers are buzzing with news of Rooney’s upcoming book, Intermezzo, set to be released this September. The novel covers the lives of two brothers, Ivan and Peter, as they navigate romantic relationships and life after death.
Rooney stated that the decision to focus on the dynamic between siblings was accidental, yet it was a natural shift in her writing. The main focus was initially Ivan until a spontaneous moment of fruition.
“I suddenly realized that Ivan had a brother—and, in that moment of realization, I felt I could see the brother’s entire personality, and these other important relationships in his life,” she shared with ABC News.
Besides writing about gorgeous Irish people and their feelings, Rooney pays careful attention to class struggles and the complexities of relationships and sex. With Intermezzo, she treads towards topics of family and grief. Another theme she includes emphasizes their age gap. Peter’s character is 10 years older than Ivan. Their age difference determines how they perceive and relate to one another.
Thirty-year-old Peter is a successful Dublin lawyer, and Ivan, his younger brother, prefers a more quiet, loner lifestyle. Both lives are shaken by the death of their father, which launches them into separate ways of coping. Peter self-medicates and finds himself torn between two of his past loves. Ivan finds himself in a relationship with an older woman whose tricky past seems to follow her. They navigate a new wave of life while also trying to sort through the aftermath of death.
Rooney has the unique and challenging ability to target common and unspoken truths through fiction, deeply affecting a wide range of individuals.
“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,” the publicity copy hints. These characters become important to us because in a way they are us.
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, the book’s publisher, rewarded the patience of fans in February by sharing the first lines of Intermezzo on X:
“Didn’t seem fair on the young lad. That suit at the funeral. With the braces on his teeth, the supreme discomfort of the adolescent.”
If these few lines are any indication of the rest of Intermezzo, we will soon have another brilliant piece of Irish literature in our hands. In the meantime, we’ll dissect these intriguing words and give Normal People another rewatch. Emo fall awaits.
Intermezzo is available for preorder at Barnes and Noble and on Amazon.
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