Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
With her trademark style, novelist Sally Rooney explores the bereavement process of two Irish brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek, in this moving work of contemporary literary fiction.
Image from Publisher Faber & Faber
Grief is beginning to fit more prominently into themes of current literary fiction, as showcased by popular bestsellers like Blue Sisters (Coco Mellors), The Life Impossible (Matt Haig), The Overstay (Richard Powers), and now in Sally Rooney’s newest work, Intermezzo. In her classic style of carefully orchestrated prose and quiet, lilting plot lines, Rooney weaves the tale of two brothers mourning the recent death of their father. Older brother Peter is a Dublin-based lawyer caught in a love triangle amidst the sticky web of self-medication and his mess is not eased by the complicated family dynamics of sibling responsibility often doubled throughout the bereavement process. Younger brother Ivan is a chess phenomenon in the awkward stage of early-twenties for a late bloomer: in an ill-fitting suit and braces at his father’s funeral, resentful of the tall shadow cast by his older brother, in giving his father’s eulogy and in life itself. While this novel focuses on the brother’s relationship and the impact grief has upon it, it wouldn’t be a classic Rooney work without the careful unraveling of love’s complicated tethers.
“Sometimes you need people to be perfect and they can’t be and you hate them forever for not being even though it isn’t their fault and it’s not yours either. ”
This tale does well what families teach us best: it straddles the line between too much and not enough. What is too much involvement in sibling relationships? Do we have a responsibility of care to our siblings as our parents mature, decline, and ultimately die? Who will keep the family pet when its caregiver dies? This dichotomy of too much/not enough extends beyond the introspection of Rooney’s characters and into the polished writing style Rooney employs for each of the distinctive voices themselves. With jarring intimacy of one’s inner-most secrets, from the sprawling and philosophical Peter’s existential contemplations to the elegant and carefully plotted Ivan’s, even the writing style invites us to consider this careful balance between over-sharing and malnourished.
“If being around his brother makes him feel bad, why should he have to do it? On the other hand it strikes her as some kind of imperative, perhaps even a law of nature, that people should do their best for one another in times of grief. Ivan and his brother have both lost the same father: surely the loss is something that should be shared, expressed, consoled, not kept separate and silent. ”
Shifting from the relationship of the Koubek brother’s to their romantic interests, more compelling topics are artfully brought to the light: how does chronic illness impact romantic relationships? Does middle age prompt death anxiety? Do we seek a denial of our own aging when we romance those who are much younger? How are we stained by the alcoholism of those we are in partnership with, even after that relationship has dissolved?
“What can life be made to accommodate, what can one life hold inside itself without breaking?”
In Intermezzo, Rooney delves into important topics once again bringing the characteristic precision her beloved fans recognize from her other popular books Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Covering addiction, chronic illness and its impacts on romantic relationships, mid-life death anxiety, and the guilt/shame paradox of complicated bereavement, we (readers) are gently dragged through consideration of the inescapable struggles of the human experience. Heavy on the character development and scant on plot, Rooney here again employs elegant construction of the narrative in her shifting use of perspective and style. Most importantly for my recommendation, Rooney spot-on nailed the ache and hollow of the grief experience, even showcasing through the opposing perspective of the Koubek brothers how that grief-ache manifests differently for each of us.
By definition, an intermezzo is a pause of in-between; an intermezzo in music transitions or in chess surprises. In Rooney’s work, the intermezzo of life is grief, in all of it’s unexpected connections.
“There is more to life than great chess. Okay, great chess is still a part of life, and it can be a very big part, very intense, satisfying, and pleasant to dwell on in the mind’s eye: but nonetheless, life contains many things. Life itself, he thinks, every moment of life, is as precious and beautiful as any game of chess ever played, if only you know how to live.”
