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emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Intermezzo is not my personal favorite of Rooney’s books based on themes and personalities. However this is extremely skillful writing, and surprised me even though I already knew how good she is. I expected a long novel about grief to be a long read, but I tore through it. Genuinely would recommend.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Drug abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Death of parent
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Car accident
Minor: Alcoholism, Drug abuse
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Alcohol
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Violence
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Grief, Alcohol
Moderate: Cancer, Drug use, Panic attacks/disorders, Injury/Injury detail
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
ouchouchouchouchouch. this book hurt.
god i don’t even know where to start with this review.
for one, this book was HARD. as in emotionally. having a dead dad and reading this……. Pain. literally started sobbing reading ivan talking to margaret on the phone about his dad. too relatable fuck you sally rooney (/j she ate this up).
usually i’m not the biggest fan of character-driven novels, as i find there are no stakes and tension. and yeah i found that an issue here too i guess. but fuck can sally rooney write characters well. this is my first book of hers so my expectations were pretty all over the place, but i did not expect such superb character writing. like at some points i felt like i had been transported into someone else’s life, watching their days from their eyes. i don’t think in all my reading life i have read characters with such depth as ivan and peter. holy shit.
also side note but i feel like anyone reading this should know that the entire time reading this i imagined ivan as oliver quick from saltburn (obv before he starts licking bathtub water). if this was ever turned into a movie adaptation barry keoghan would devour the role (although ntm for hurting my girl sabrina).
this review has gotten away from me.
like this book.
usually i also often despise stream of consciousness books!!! but!!!! rooney yet again leaves no crumbs!!!! it is like watching a car crash happen right in front of you for 442 pages and you can’t look away because you are oddly mesmerised by the sheer magnitude of what is happening. Yeah. that’s intermezzo in a nutshell.
also how can i not shout out my three homegirls — margaret, sylvia & naomi. i’ll be real and say i didn’t like naomi, and even by the end she felt a bit one-note, but that could be some meta-commentary on how peter views the women in his life blah blah blah. sylvia had a bit more depth, what with her chronic pain (spoonies rise up!!!) and her life outside of peter, and was by far the most interesting out of the main female cast. margaret was… also a bit boring? she also felt quite repetitive with her dialogue and inner thoughts at times, especially surrounding her relationship with ivan. like yeah the age gap isn’t small but homegirl it’s not like ur 78 and ivan is 19 like. take a xanax like ol peter boy over here.
i don’t really know what else to add. this book is a fever dream. i honestly didn’t want to pick this up for dread of what i would encounter, but once i started reading i couldn’t peel my eyes away. the book had some issues for me personally, but they weren’t due to the actual writing being bad or anything, just preferences. like i didn’t mind the dialogue choice but what i did mind is the no plot no tension insanely philosophical thoughts appearing out of thin air. although if you asked me what my favourite parts of this book were i’d have to say the insanely philosophical thoughts appearing out of thin air.
this book is a paradox for me
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Alcohol
Moderate: Alcoholism, Violence
Minor: Medical content
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Cancer, Death, Drug abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Death of parent, Alcohol
Minor: Animal cruelty
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
What I did not have a problem with in this book:
the lack of quotation marks for the dialogue – Some people always complain about this and I do not get why. It is very clear what is and is not dialogue.
What I hated in this book:
the cliché autistic character written by a non-autistic author – and him being mocked by his own brother for it, and this not getting addressed.
the wishy-washy religiousness
the relentless abelism featuring the “convenient for the plot disease” – aka the unnamed mysterious health issue one of the love interests. That only prevents her from having a normal sex life. But otherwise she is living on her own, maintains a full-time university lecturer job, has an active social life and is involved in the community, and has time for an on-and-off-again romance with one of the male protagonists. The especially disgusting part about this is that the main protagonist is more than willing to live with this condition. It is she, the disabled person, who wants to turn herself into a martyr, but at the same time string him on forever. Disgusting representation of disability from on of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world of 2022.
the cringey sex scenes
the prudish fear of “what will the townspeople think”
the polyamory phobia – I hate love triangles in books. So this coupled with the constant avoidance and disgust the characters show for the very obvious solution to their situation (I do not want to call it a problem) was very annoying. Is Rooney trying to trigger the liberals or the conservatives with this? She was after all “the top debater at the European Universities Debating Championships in 2013”. She literally puts debate edgelord Ben Shapiro’s famous “facts don’t care about your feelings” line in the mouth of one of the main characters. And honestly this book would have been a lot more interesting if instead of chess it would have featured a debate society. A university debate champion brother versus his practicing lawyer brother (you know someone who debates in the real world with real stakes) and their conflict and avoidance of their childhood traumas and grief over their father? Sounds great, and unlike most authors Rooney could write this from experience. Instead we got this fake, poorly put together shit. I will not speculate about the reasons for that, since I no longer care.
the agesim (we cannot have a relationship because I am so much older than you + you cannot have a relationship with a woman who is older than you, but at the same time...)
the hypocracy (… I can have a relationship with a woman who is younger than me) You could say this is part of the plot, but it is never addressed or resolved. As far as I am concerned this is yet another lazy plot device. Why did she write this like it takes place in the ye olde 1600’s?
the fake working-class struggle whining (I can’t make my share of rent this month because I am not being payed by this company, so I’ll just go stay at my dead dad’s house, which is technically my house now, for free)
the yoda-speak – I saw some reviews mention that Rooney claims this is inspired by James Joyce. I have not read any of Joyce’s work, but I have watched nine Star Wars movies. My conclusion: The Yoda is strong in Peter.
the poorly written suicidal thoughts
the lack of believable characters all throughout
the length – please hire some editors again, I beg you. Not every book needs to be 400+ pages.
Overall this really was the last chance I gave to Rooney. I thought Normal People was ok, but nothing memorable. I intensely disliked Beautiful World Where Are You, and promised myself not to give in to the hype for her next book. Then came the hype for Intermezzo. So I bought it. And ended up hating it again. But with this I am well and truly done.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Chronic illness, Drug use, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Dysphoria, Classism
Moderate: Ableism, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Body shaming, Chronic illness, Cursing, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Grief, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Alcohol
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Drug abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Death of parent
Moderate: Abortion
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, Suicide, Death of parent, Alcohol
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked this a lot to begin with, mostly because I love salley’s writing style and her attention to detail. When reading this, one thing that really stood out to me was her attention to light - both its quality and what it’s source was, that felt so vivid and exact in her descriptions
And of the way love can really be easy when you uncomplicate it from society’s expectations that you’ve internalised - particularly this in Ivan and margret’s relationship - like his line v early on about is this how it feels to want and her and it can be that simple? How I feel about Amel sometimes before the stress/fear/doubt kicks in - there is something v beautiful about these moments of complete clarity, whether or not they’ll have any bearing in the long-term future or not - reminds me of arch budzar’s frog: I saw something I loved and ran after it, I don’t care if it didn’t bring me anywhere - the love in the now is enough
And in this the descriptions of beauty, not in simple terms of aesthetic but of sensation and feeling and ephemerality - the idea that a feeling of beauty is akin to god, that such beauty exists is a sign that god exists - maybe in a way that’s what Ivan’s chess talent is, like yes he works hard and studies but the times he’s doing the best is when he’s in love and feeling rather than thinking the game
Surprisingly, the bits on grief/loss didn’t really hit home for me
Maybe feels a bit like ACE therapy (at least the little I know of it)
And of the way love can really be easy when you uncomplicate it from society’s expectations that you’ve internalised - particularly this in Ivan and margret’s relationship - like his line v early on about is this how it feels to want and her and it can be that simple? How I feel about Amel sometimes before the stress/fear/doubt kicks in - there is something v beautiful about these moments of complete clarity, whether or not they’ll have any bearing in the long-term future or not - reminds me of arch budzar’s frog: I saw something I loved and ran after it, I don’t care if it didn’t bring me anywhere - the love in the now is enough
And in this the descriptions of beauty, not in simple terms of aesthetic but of sensation and feeling and ephemerality - the idea that a feeling of beauty is akin to god, that such beauty exists is a sign that god exists - maybe in a way that’s what Ivan’s chess talent is, like yes he works hard and studies but the times he’s doing the best is when he’s in love and feeling rather than thinking the game
Surprisingly, the bits on grief/loss didn’t really hit home for me
Maybe feels a bit like ACE therapy (at least the little I know of it)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Grief, Death of parent