Intermezzo

By: Sally Rooney

Narrated by: Éanna Hardwicke

THE GLOBAL NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD

'I read it in a state of rapture.' SUNDAY TIMES
'A tender, funny page-turner.' OBSERVER
'Come for the romance, stay for the meaning of life.' IRISH TIMES
'A breathtakingly intimate look at love and desire in its many different forms.' RED

From the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Normal People, an exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties - successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women - his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude - a period of desire, despair and possibility - a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

Sally Rooney's book Intermezzo was a bestseller w/c 30/09/2024

©2024 Sally Rooney (P)2024 Faber & Faber

Not my favourite

I adore Sally Rooney but this book just fell flat for me. Too much rumination without any reprieve.

Writing at it’s best

It was sometime difficult to differentiate between the male and female narration, otherwise an incredible story!

Fraught fraternal dynamics

Rooney's characters ponder: "What can life be made to accommodate, what can one life hold inside itself without breaking?" Apparently — like this novel — quite a lot! Excellent!

Sally Rooney just gets better and better

I loved every minute of this complex and beautiful story, perfectly narrated by Éanna Hardwicke.
I cried.

softest hand for the toughest journey

i guess she knows how to handle delicate situations better than my therapist otherwise i wouldn’t like to revisit my fathers death or reconsider my lost relationship with my sister after reading this book. hope to find 2 better halves soon. fingers crossed