Zi7ZpiJVl2
By virtue of her own talent and popularity, new works from Sally Rooney are scrutinised to a much more intense degree than that of her contemporaries. Since the release (and meteoric success) of Conversations with Friends and Normal People, and their respective small screen adaptations, the words ‘Sally Rooney’ have become something of a literary subgenre, a reductive brand of Rooney-ism that comes much to the chagrin of the author herself and the many young-Irish-female-realist writers attempting to make their own names.
Rooney’s new title, Intermezzo, isn’t even out yet and it’s already being held up to the light and examined for cracks or contradictions. The author is both lauded and condemned for her portrayal of “emotionally stunted Irish people”, but Rooney’s canny ability to give us a new perspective into the interior worlds of these fictional characters is unmatched — even if they don’t tell each other how they feel, each silence is dripping with sincerity.
While we understand the complicated history and hear the rumination of Ivan’s love interest Margaret, a divorcee 14 years his senior, we merely catch fleeting glimpses of Peter’s love interests. Caught between two lovers, he positions Sylvia, a university lecturer and college sweetheart, and Naomi, a 20-something student whose life runs at a much different pace, on opposite sides of the spectrum. Where Ivan sees Margaret as a wholly realised person, Sylvia and Naomi serve to “delay however briefly [Peter’s] next encounter with the meaninglessness of existence”, coming to understand far too slowly that people (yes, even 20-something year old women) contain multitudes.
The beauty of Intermezzo is its resounding authenticity, its existence as a text that proffers existential questions without the arrogance of an attempted answer. Death and love are two of the most ubiquitous topics of all, things we all experience, have experienced, or will experience. Love and death are somehow plainly ordinary, everyday occurrences, but on an individual level, they’re the most earth shattering, all encompassing experiences of all.
‘Intermezzo’ by Sally Rooney is published by Faber, and goes on sale on Tuesday 24 September.
Imagery via BBC and Element Pictures.