Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Intermezzo

Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

78 reviews

carojust's review against another edition

3.25

emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I understand the appeal of Sally Rooney's storytelling, yet I personally have a hard time with it. There are beautiful, interwoven character studies in "Intermezzo" with relatable conflict in family and romantic love. But it feels like an excruciating wind-up for a couple pages of emotional release, rendering the majority of the book dramatic and airless. I'm inner-monologued out.

This book covers a lot about grief, and loneliness and the complicated nature of love. It basically illustrates what happens when an entire family doesn't believe in therapy or communication, so you watch a lot of toxic self-soothing and mommy issues playing out.

You'll like this if you have similar family dynamics, and like experiencing unstable narrators finding their way to redemption. Lots of TWs.

Content Warnings

shaleen64's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional hopeful 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: Complicated

For me, Sally Rooney is one of my auto-buy authors and Intermezzo has not changed this.

The book follows bothers, Ivan and Peter, following the death of their dad. It explores their relationship as brothers during their grief but also their relationship with their mother and their respective partners and friends.

Tactfully, the themes of loss, grief, self image, mental illness and self loathing are explored.

Sally Rooney is able to create such fully realised characters that you can love, relate to and be frustrated by in equal measure. Unlike her other novels, I really enjoyed following two male main characters.

Whilst Normal People still remains my personal favourite. Intermezzo contains everything I have come to expect and hope for from Sally Rooney.

Content Warnings

ericispublius's review against another edition

5.0

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective sad tense medium-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

Sally Rooney has released her penultimate work, diving headfirst into the complexities of interpersonal relationships. I found myself splitting with laughter, tying my heart back together, & squeezing with tension throughout this work.

Content Warnings

jensend's review against another edition

4.25

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Are the flaws of the main character(s) the main focus of this book? For Sally Rooney, the answer is always a resounding yes. It took me three tries to finish this book. I struggled to pick this book up at first and at middle, but not at the end. Any author who can get you to look past the most infuriating sentence structure of Peter’s consciousness deserves your respect. Rooney trains you to fill in the gap of every incomplete sentence so that you find yourself flying with great efficiency through Peter’s chapters by the end of the novel as if you are Peter himself. Ivan—sweet Ivan. He is the heart and soul of this book. In rooting for Ivan, you find a way through the book.

This book is about the gray areas (opportunities) in life that exist outside the constrictive moral netting of society’s design, a righteous morality that sets out to shame as oppose to bring us closer to beauty. It is explores the joy and pain of living true to the selfish, animal that asks us to deviate from the “norm”—the palatable. It makes us wonder: perhaps beauty shouldn’t always have to answer to harsh reality. Bravo, Sally Rooney.

Content Warnings

haleylooloo's review against another edition

4.5

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Wow, what a book! The ending was absolutely brilliant. A bit slow to get going & get into it but so worth it by the end.

In the beginning of the book I truly dreaded every Peter chapter hahaha, I thought he was the worst but by the end I wouldn’t say I liked him but I wasn’t avoiding reading his chapters anymore that’s for sure.

Content Warnings

seeeenf's review against another edition

5.0

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

stindex's review against another edition

3.75

challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

juditkovacs's review against another edition

1.0

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