Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Readers of the plentiful coverage of Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, are at risk of developing the false impression that it is, at its heart, a romance. Reviews from Vulture, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere emphasize romantic love as its central theme. To be fair, the novel contains the romantic relationships of two brothers: Peter, an early thirties lawyer who uses work, drugs, and alcohol to avoid his emotions, and Ivan, an early twenties socially awkward chess champion with braces and little romantic experience. Peter is caught between lingering feelings for his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, who suffered a debilitating accident that resulted in their breakup, and a new relationship with a 23-year-old student and camgirl named Naomi. Meanwhile, Ivan falls for Margaret, a 36-year-old soon-to-be-divorcée, at a chess tournament hosted at the arts center where she is the events coordinator.

On the surface, this pair of relationships seems to mirror the intertwining romantic relationships present in Rooney’s first three novels. But the central relationship in this book is not romantic. It’s familial. Intermezzo moves Rooney’s oeuvre into new territory, blending her characteristic emotional depth with a fresh focus on familial relationships. While previous works like Conversations with Friends and Beautiful World, Where Are You? have followed groups of friends, Intermezzo is the first to turn its attention to the relationship between two siblings, who, in the aftermath of their father’s death, struggle to understand who they are to each other.

The plot is driven by the slow, painful breakdown of Peter and Ivan’s relationship. In a flashback to the aftermath of Sylvia’s accident, Peter falls into a deep well of depression and moves back home, listlessly hovering around and barely eating or speaking. One night, Ivan finds Peter sitting, staring wordlessly in the kitchen, and before Ivan can tiptoe out sight unseen, Peter begins to cry and confesses how alone and scared he feels. But Ivan ignores Peter’s obvious suffering: “And instead of acknowledging that he had heard these words spoken, Ivan just turned around silently and went back up to bed. It was a conversation he didn’t want to have.”

Things eventually return to normal—they are still brothers, after all, and are connected largely through their father (their mother has remarried and is mostly preoccupied with her new family). After his death, though, their relationship reaches a crossroads. Is anything still holding them to each other? Will they maintain their bond?

The brothers get into two major fights in the book. The first occurs when the brothers meet somewhat awkwardly over dinner, and Ivan, eager to impress and relate to his older brother, lets slip that Margaret is 36 and married. When Peter responds harshly, Ivan hisses that he has always hated him, and they stop speaking for some time. The second is near the end of the book. When Ivan discovers Peter’s hypocritical relationship with Naomi, he and Peter stumble into a physical altercation. Provoked, Peter throws Ivan to the ground and, in the haze of his rage, threatens to kill him (although, importantly, he comes to and renounces the threat seconds later).

Besides interrogating the dynamics of a sibling relationship, Intermezzo asks broader questions about what dissociation means for one’s self-conception and how it ripples out to the world around them. This theme is echoed in the brothers’ romantic pursuits: Margaret grapples with separating from her husband, who is an alcoholic but, she insists, ultimately harmless, and Peter and Sylvia struggle to move on after she ends their relationship from fear of being resented for the condition her accident leaves her in. At its core, Intermezzo is a story of estrangement. Or, as the ending reveals, a story of near estrangement.

It’s also a novel about the choices we do or do not make in relationships. Rooney’s characters are notorious for their failures of communication and their misunderstandings, the consequences of which feel more passive, like they just happen to the characters. In Intermezzo, Rooney adds a layer by grappling with the choices we must make to sustain relationships and the active, attentive work they require—even within a family, where it’s easy to assume they will always endure.

Although the novel represents a step forward thematically and stylistically for Rooney, it is not without its faults. It doesn’t sit altogether well that the brief mention of Ivan’s apparent dabble with incel ideology (and that it has seemingly ceased since being in a relationship with a woman for the first time) goes largely undeveloped. The positioning of Sylvia’s disability—particularly her inability to have pain-free penetrative sex—as the cause of her breakup with Peter and their mutual suffering, which is essentially used as a plot device and nothing more, comes off as crass at best and stigmatizing at worst.

On the whole, though, Intermezzo shows off what Rooney does best: write complex, resonant characters and confront the intricacies of human connection through exacting, lyrical prose. Exploring morality, beauty, and grief, she delivers an insightful examination of the enduring challenges of intimacy, romantic and familial.