A review by aine_
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

4.5

• loooooved this. we might view intermezzo as rooney’s opus in the future - it’s so ambitious and its scope is honestly aspirational. it so deftly and subtly tackles so many heavy themes so elegantly !!!!! it’s a tough read but it’s so rewarding and so fruitful. i can’t wait to return to it in the future and annotate a paperback copy to hell and back and see which elements strike me differently the second or fifth time around. maybe not my favourite (i didn’t completely adore the third part as much as the first and second) but still absolutely spectacular. 
• this reminds me a little of wes anderson’s asteroid city or maybe virginia woolf’s orlando in its self-aware stylistic exaggeration (and its constant literary references) - it’s like if you took every stylistic and thematic element of rooney’s other work and and turned the dials up as far as they would go but it works so well !!!!!! 
• big fan of the stylistically differing narrative styles between ivan and peter - they’re so striking and reflective of the characters !!!!! and i loved seeing the same events from differing perspectives - i don’t think the same effect could have been reached by telling the story from one side or the other
• loved how cautiously hopeful the end was. i’m honestly not sure how rooney has ended up as a horseman of “sad girl lit.” whilst her characters often aren’t doing particularly well she often ends her novels with some sort of tentative resolution and a hope that some lasting happiness can be established. i wish i’d read this before christmas.