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A review by casskrug
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
5.0
sally rooney has done it again, and i have to be honest i wasn’t prepared for the way i got swept up in this book. it’s been 2+ years since i read rooney’s previous novels (all of which i loved), and i was worried that intermezzo wouldn’t be a story that appealed to me, or that i had moved on from rooney’s writing style. quite the opposite - i finished this 450+ page book in 6 days, which is FAST for me when it comes to such a big book.
intermezzo follows two brothers, ivan and peter, in the aftermath of their father’s death. in classic rooney fashion, there are romantic entanglements, heart-wrenching lines about how complicated life and love can be, and explorations of class, power dynamics in relationships, and the ways we move throughout the world. i really loved the portrayal of family relationships and the complicated bond between peter and ivan. there were also a lot of layers to the romantic relationships - rooney captures the nuances of each situation so poignantly.
a departure for rooney here is the difference in writing style between ivan and peter’s points of view. we see her try out a more clipped, fragmented style with peter. it threw me off at first, but as i progressed through the story, i found it to be a really effective way of demonstrating his mental state. ivan’s chapters are more along the lines of rooney’s previous works, and the juxtaposition of the two voices was a great way to characterize and show the differences between the brothers.
this is definitely a more mature novel from rooney, but i don’t think it’ll alienate fans of her previous books. this felt like a complex and truly fleshed out Novel with a capital N to me. it’s the kind of book that you can get truly lost in, and i enjoyed it immensely!
intermezzo follows two brothers, ivan and peter, in the aftermath of their father’s death. in classic rooney fashion, there are romantic entanglements, heart-wrenching lines about how complicated life and love can be, and explorations of class, power dynamics in relationships, and the ways we move throughout the world. i really loved the portrayal of family relationships and the complicated bond between peter and ivan. there were also a lot of layers to the romantic relationships - rooney captures the nuances of each situation so poignantly.
a departure for rooney here is the difference in writing style between ivan and peter’s points of view. we see her try out a more clipped, fragmented style with peter. it threw me off at first, but as i progressed through the story, i found it to be a really effective way of demonstrating his mental state. ivan’s chapters are more along the lines of rooney’s previous works, and the juxtaposition of the two voices was a great way to characterize and show the differences between the brothers.
this is definitely a more mature novel from rooney, but i don’t think it’ll alienate fans of her previous books. this felt like a complex and truly fleshed out Novel with a capital N to me. it’s the kind of book that you can get truly lost in, and i enjoyed it immensely!