Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo is ‘utterly perfect’ say critics

Intermezzo – a chess move, a composition of music, and now, Sally Rooney’s latest novel, which critics have called “utterly perfect”.

The Irish author’s fourth book swaps out her usual female protagonist and instead follows the relationship between two grieving brothers who are both in age-gap relationships and think they have little in common.

Ivan is a 22-year-old competitive chess player and a “complete oddball” according to his older brother, Peter, a smooth-talking barrister.

The Guardian’s Anthony Cummins said the book was “truly wonderful – a tender, funny page-turner about the derangements of grief, and Rooney’s richest treatment yet of messy romantic entanglements”.

Rooney is no stranger to writing about relationships – her 2018 novel Normal People turned her into a global phenomenon and more than 1m copies have been sold in the UK.

Despite the themes of intimacy, communication and desire being central to all her novels, critics generally agreed that Intermezzo is more “confident” than the rest.

In a five-star review, The Independent’s Jo Hamya said Rooney “at last, discovers the full potential of her prowess.”

“For those who have been patient enough to wait, the reward is transcendent.”

The i’s Anna Bonet added Intermezzo is “mature and profound and feels like a culmination of everything she has done before”.

Despite describing it as a “marvel” and “Rooney’s best book yet”, Bonet also adds that it is “not a flawless novel”.

Like Rooney’s other novels, chapters alternate from the point of views of different characters, but one person whose point of view isn’t written about is Naomi, one of Peter’s love interests.

“Naomi is not as well fleshed out as the other characters,” Bonet noted.

The FT’s Shahidha Bari agreed and said the weakness of the novel is “the depiction of the subsidiary female characters”.

“The saintly Sylvia feels cast in the mould of a recognisably Rooney-esque heroine, and the blithe Naomi, complete with nose stud and a risqué social media account, teeters a little too closely to a Gen Z variation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.”

But Bari added there is “something more impressionistic” about the writing compared with Rooney’s usually “spare style”, where characters don’t have much dialogue.

Speaking to the New York Times, Rooney said she didn’t feel that she “had to write a book where the male voice is central”.

“I just felt my way through the story that seemed to emerge when I encountered these characters.”

Asked about whether she feels her books are too similar, Rooney said: “I don’t care about my career.

“I think about, how do I make this book the perfect version of what it can be? I never think about it in relation to my other work, and I never think about what people will say about how close or distant it is from my oeuvre.”

While most agree that Intermezzo is a step up from her other novels, Lola Seaton in the New Statesman said it “lacks the taut self-assurance of Conversations with Friends and Normal People”.

Nonetheless, she added that it was an “honourable, tenacious and not unsuccessful attempt to go beyond them, and to leave – indeed to run some distance from – her formal comfort zone”.

Two of Rooney’s novels have been adapted for TV – her debut, Conversations with Friends, aired in 2022 and Normal People, starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, was a huge lockdown hit in 2020.