I'm not sure anyone needs a recommendation of Intermezzo, or any other novel by Sally Rooney, given how much attention they get anyway. This is just to say I read it now, two years after it came out, and I am glad I did!
This is a novel about siblings, Peter, 32 and Ivan, a decade younger. When the story begins, the boys have just lost their father. Peter, a lawyer, is in charge of the service, and he can’t help being embarrassed by his kid brother Ivan - chess whiz, socially awkward, in his ugly rented suit, looking utterly lost. The brothers were once close, but not for a while now. Neither is particularly close to their mother, who divorced their father a long time ago.
In the weeks following the funeral, Peter is a mess. Struggling to sleep, he's popping pills, and drinking too much. He experiences existential angst and vague suicidal feelings. His thoughts are fuzzy, overcrowded — rendered in a slightly disorienting staccato prose by Rooney — as he barely makes it from one day to the next.
Ivan on the other hand, considered “weird” by most people who consider themselves “normal”, has certainly struggled but now at nearly 23, is more mature and seems calmer than Peter emotionally. It’s true, he can’t always read expressions or sub-text in a conversation, and can be stiff in social situations, but because he's well aware of this, he rarely responds without carefully considering what has been said. His chess ranking and accomplishments have been on a downswing these past few years, ever since their father got sick.
While dealing with the loss of their father, the brothers have their own emotional challenges as well. Peter is caught between his current girlfriend Naomi, a 23-year old college student, and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, the love of his life. Peter and Sylvia are together but not together, and it’s complicated.
Ivan meanwhile meets Margaret at a chess event. Margaret, the coordinator at the arts council that hosts the event, is 36, has an ex-husband from whom she is separated, and is working on rebuilding her life when Ivan enters it. Keenly aware of, and slightly mortified by the age gap, she is convinced that they cannot possibly have a future. Ivan disagrees.
The brothers’ tentative attempt at reconnecting blows up when Peter reacts badly to Ivan’s news of his new girlfriend. Ivan who confides this to Peter in a rare moment of openness and trust, cuts off all contact with his brother.
We follow both brothers as they each try and make sense of their own grief, their relationships, and their way forward (and hopefully back to each other) in a strange new world without their father in it.
I felt protective of Ivan, just as Peter does, but then I realized that Ivan is quite capable of deciphering the world around him in his own precise and methodical way. While Peter makes a grand mess of things all around, he's still someone you’d like to see sort things out.
I liked Margaret’s grace even as she was caught in the toughest situation of them all, with the most to lose. No one blinks when Peter dates Naomi who is Ivan’s age but it’s not the same for Margaret. In the end I cared about these characters and what happens to them, and that’s a good read for me.