Intermezzo an Intelligent Study in Five Voices

 

 

 

Intermezzo (2024)

By Sally Rooney

Faber & Faber, 336 pages

★★★★★

 

I admire Irish novelist Sally Rooney, though some critics find her writing antiseptic and claustrophobic. Rooney is not a fan of quotation marks and is generally more cerebral than her characters. In my mind, her intellectualism is a way of adding depth to characters lacking self-awareness. That is certainly true in Intermezzo.

 

In music and drama intermezzo is a short interlude within a larger movement or play. It is also an unexpected moment in a chess match that an opponent might not anticipate. Rooney’s Intermezzo has a chess subtheme, but it is indeed about the unexpected. Without breaks from the norm we’d have little more than a run-of-the-mill tale about a fractured family, bickering brothers, and age gaps. Rooney uses breaks from the norm to create crisis points.

 

The first involves the death of Peter and Ivan Koubek’s* father. Peter is a 32-year-old barrister trying to fight the good fight and often stumbling over his cynicism and bad habits. His brother Ivan is 22, a chess genius whose social skills are so underdeveloped that we suspect he’s on the autism spectrum. Peter has often looked after Ivan, but in a controlling fashion. Ivan was deeply attached to his father and the fact that Peter has handled their father’s death better is just one of many resentments Ivan holds against him. Peter, in turn, is annoyed by Ivan’s immaturity, tantrums, and what he sees as Ivan’s lack of responsibility. We can tell early on that Da’ was the family glue. In a clever intermezzo of her own, Rooney gives each major character a distinct voice; Peter is rational and authoritative, Ivan is boyish and humorous, and the female characters are also quite different.

 

The novel’s central relationship is between the two brothers, but it is the women who pull the strings. Ivan has just won a chess match in which he played nine opponents simultaneously and defeated them all–hardly surprising as he is playing an exhibition against those of far lesser skills. The big conquest is that Ivan meets arts and events manager Margaret Keane. She is separated from her alcoholic and sometimes violent husband Ricky and is estranged from her mother who makes excuses for him. To cut to the chase, Margaret and Ivan become secret lovers and Margaret serves as Ivan’s teacher for many things, including adult life. Ivan, though, is open, gentle, kind, and a terrific lover who couldn’t care less that she is nearly 14 years his senior. Ivan immerses himself in Margaret, tells Peter nothing of her existence, argues with Peter, and eventually cuts off contact his brother.

 

Peter assumes an older-and-wiser stand, but he carries loads of anguish. It doesn’t even begin to cut it to say that his love life is also complicated. He was (and is) deeply in love with Sylvia, a 32-year-old English professor who adored Ivan. They broke up because Sylvia was in an auto accident and suffered a spinal injury that left permanent damage and excruciating pain. She is unable to have sex, but they remain soulmates who spend a lot of time with each other. Through unusual circumstances Peter meets 23-year-old Naomi, who does porn modeling and casual prostitution. From time to time, Peter is also in love with her. Sylvia knows about this and encourages Peter to pursue Naomi. Sylvia is thus a voice of reality and Naomi that of possibility and Ivan-like joy, No wonder the two brothers battle; each is struggling against their own fears, socially awkward situations, and role reversals.  

 

I suspect most readers of this review (and the novel) will reflexively recoil at the unorthodox relationships of Intermezzo. The only remotely conventional one is that of Peter and Sylvia, but it would require Peter to become a secular monk. Rooney gives us three pairs whose viability is up for grabs: Peter and Ivan, Peter and Naomi, and Ivan and Naomi. How will all of this play out? Did I mention there’s a dog, a chess career, and two mothers involved? Or that the respective love affairs are largely closeted?

 

Intermezzo has been called a novel about grief, family, and love. That’s accurate, but we should also add that it was written by an intelligent stylist.

 

Rob Weir

 

* The brothers are Irish but the family ancestry is Slovak. Rooney uses the Koubek surname to emphasize outsider status.