By Megan Thomas
I ran down to Steyning Bookshop to get this special edition copy the moment they posted about it. What do you think?
There are authors like Maggie O’Farrell and Margaret Atwood whose backlists will be on my TBR list for the rest of my life. I feel really lucky to have been reading Sally Rooney since her debut, Conversations With Friends, because it means I will never have to do this for her – I will simply read everything she ever writes.
I had a lull in the middle of Intermezzo which made me really slow down my reading. I think this is a product of not reading her books quickly enough – you need to stay in the moment and in the characters’ heads to fully appreciate how skilfully she has written this novel. I read the second half a lot faster and so, by the end, was as enamoured by her as always. It’s books like Intermezzo that are why I refuse to leave books unfinished, because this went from one I didn’t really want to keep reading to a 5 star review.
I’m not convinced the plot really matters with Rooney novels, because it’s all about the way she tells the story and the characters’ internal dialogues and personality intricacies, but I did enjoy the plot. It follows two very different brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek, navigating life after their father’s death. Peter is a lawyer in his 30s, Ivan is a competitive chess player in his 20s, and neither of them, for all the brain cells between them, can properly communicate with the other. Both are in complicated romantic relationships (true Rooney form) which are simultaneously unique but also similar in many ways – or at least running in parallel.
The prose is both crisp and meandering, used interchangeably to give the characters distinct voices. So vivid and rounded are these characters, that when you return to their chapters after a stint with someone else, you are under no delusions that they’ve been waiting where you left them, but rather continuing with their lives. They exist far beyond the page. A testimony to Rooney’s craft.
Rooney is unquestionably Marmite for readers. Where do you stand?
BUY THE BOOK: Waterstones | Amazon
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