Sally Rooney - Intermezzo

Here’s a clean, atmospheric, Rumor-Books-friendly summary of Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo — cool, elegant, emotional, no fluff:

Sally Rooney – Intermezzo

Rooney’s fourth novel slips into the lives of two Irish brothers—Peter, a high-strung lawyer barely holding together the façade of success, and Ivan, a young chess prodigy who’s quietly imploding under expectation. Their father dies suddenly, and the two men—so different they might as well be from different planets—are forced into the same emotional orbit, stumbling through grief, desire, and the strange, indecipherable rhythms of adult life.

Intermezzo is Rooney at her sharpest: clipped dialogue that cuts clean, intimate rooms where love and miscommunication coil together, and that uncanny ability she has to make ordinary interactions feel like seismic events. It’s a story about the cracks that form in families, the people we choose to love despite ourselves, and the slow, awkward choreography of trying to become someone better than the person you were last year.

Quiet, devastating, and surgically observed — a mid-life symphony disguised as a domestic novel. If you liked Normal People but wanted something a little heavier, sadder, and more grown-up, this is the one.