‘Intermezzo’: Sally Rooney has done it again with this novel of cracks in primordial relationships

“Life, after all, has not slipped free of its netting. There is no such life, slipping free: life is itself the netting, holding people in place, making sense of things. It is not possible to tear away the constraints and simply carry on a senseless existence. People, other people, make it impossible.”

Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo, is cleverly named. It’s no accident that she chose a word that means “a short connecting instrumental movement in an opera or other musical work” as the title. Written from the perspectives of two brothers, Peter and Ivan, the reader is free to make what they will of their stories from what is left unsaid, or the brothers only half reveal or choose to lie about. How the reader fills these silences is what “connects” the brothers to each other, thus completing their stories.

Peter and Ivan have recently lost their fathers to a long battle with cancer. Their mother left the family many years ago and is married to another man. She much prefers her stepchildren – traditionally successful – to her own. She floats in and out of the brothers’ life and each of them likes to keep the other at arm’s length at all times. Both closer to their father, the brothers never developed any real affection for their mother. In some instances, Peter addresses his mother by her first name, Christine.

Peter and Ivan

Peter, a lawyer in his early 30s, is going through a relationship crisis. He’s dating a young college student (23) but is still in love with his first girlfriend, Sylvia. Their relationship of six years came to an abrupt end when Sylvia got into an accident that left her with chronic pain. The breakup, initiated by Sylvia, has not given Peter a clean break. He finds himself going back to her time and again and quite literally begging her to take him back. Meanwhile, his present girlfriend, Naomi, is serious about little else besides having a good time. Peter pays for her lifestyle and she seems to be in no particular hurry to complete her degree and get a job.

Ivan, 22, has recently graduated from college. On the side, he is a chess “prodigy” who has tasted some success in the local circles till his father’s illness and death paused his climb. Struggling to find professional success, Ivan freelances on the side while his primary goal remains to be a more well-known chess player. A self-admitted failure at love and social interactions, Ivan considers himself – and so does Peter – the family black sheep. Especially, in comparison to his suave and smooth-talking elder brother.

When Ivan meets Margaret, 36, at a chess exhibition, he is instantly taken by her. In the course of a few hours, they get into bed together. Margaret, older and undergoing a divorce, is unsure of the fling. The age gap and certain assumptions that come attached to these relationships weigh heavily on her as she considers what the implications of the relationship on her young boyfriend might be. For what it’s worth, the inexperience of romantic relationships is freeing for Ivan who refuses to see their relationship through the narrow, judgmental lens of social mores – he likes Margaret for who she is, and her age or marital status does not deter him from wanting a long-term relationship with her.

Rooney writes about desire – emotional and sexual – in a way that perhaps only young writers can. What looks frivolous from the outside – two white men with girl troubles – reveals a deeper, more complex inner life where every choice is a consequence of their childhoods and experiences that shaped their formative years. Rooney has been criticised for not being political in her craft or allowing her female characters to have less than generous views of herself. Some have even said that she seems to write only for Millennials.

I have often thought of these remarks more as an observation than “criticism” of her fiction. A Millennial herself, it is not surprising that she prefers to write about people who are not very different from her in age and social hierarchy. With every novel, she introduces slightly older characters in an “adult” situation as they try to make sense of their newfound responsibilities. The host of college students and young professionals in her novels presents a mostly true picture of what being an adult outside of your public persona feels like. Her resolute focus on the workings of her characters’s private lives gives us answers to what coming to terms with life – as we know it – means for Millennials. Rooney is meticulous in her depiction of a generation that was raised on social media, consumes news in byte sizes, and whose political opinions come from social media infographics. But what do these external descriptions mean for the story she’s trying to tell?

The extremes of grief

In Intermezzo, for instance, the brothers seem to have little trouble in their lives besides their complicated relationships with women. But for Rooney, these are asides. Through alternating narratives, she shows how cracks develop in primordial relationships when we do not know what to do with our grief. The father’s passing – and earlier, the mother’s abandonment – has compounded the brothers’s anguish. Unable to put into words the helplessness he feels, Peter lords over women and has generally anti-feminist views. He is averse to criticism of any kind which makes him more of a concept than a real human being for everyone in his life.

Ivan, on the other hand, has a pathetically low opinion of himself. The constant comparison with his brother has further eroded his self-esteem. The affection he receives from Margaret boosts his self-confidence while conversely also makes him inconsiderate of the practical concerns she has. Both brothers, who almost exclusively live in their heads, attack each other verbally and physically in an attempt to avoid the painful void left behind by their father’s death.

Rooney tackles the themes of grief and masculine ego by showing both extremes of the spectrum in her characters. In his sections, Peter’s puts up a false show of confidence – the narration is often fragmented and flows in the stream-of-consciousness style. It is hard to differentiate between his inner monologue and his dialogues. The grief he refuses to admit and the helplessness he feels becomes clear as his confusion is replicated on the page. His garbled speech and the rare coherence of thought make the reader sympathetic to Peter’s inner turmoil.

Ivan, in keeping with his chess prodigy identity, has a more structured and analytical mindset. He goes about his days methodically – the dog that suddenly has no one to look after him, the house that needs to be looked after, and practical concerns about money keep him on his feet. At 22, he does not seem to show an abandon for life that most people his age do. He feels distant from his friends and prefers spending his weekends in Margaret’s quiet company. Unlike Peter, his grief is not as self-destructing as it is restricting – second chances do not exist for him and he is rather myopic about the dimensions of human relationships. Rooney keeps Ivan’s sections shorter and his clipped manner of speaking reveals a young man who has grown up in the shadows of his more outgoing brother. The fact that on most days he has had only his thoughts for company is evident in Ivan’s hesitation to speak plainly about the most ordinary things in life.

Intermezzo feels both similar and different from Rooney’s previous novels. She is still grappling with romantic love, how our childhood lacks and abundances affect it, the headiness of sexual desire. What she does differently in this novel is put romantic love – messy and confounding – on the back burner. What we get to see instead is the author’s curiosity about human connections – both of blood and our own choosing. She dissects how each of us subverts, in whatever small ways, the traditional understandings of love. From age-gap relationships to polyamory, we see the possibilities we open ourselves to when love is promised. It is also in love that we feel our bravest. In Intermezzo, Rooney presents her characters as deeply flawed and rather unlikable but there is optimism even in this truthful (if unsavoury) depiction – that there is reconcilation and redemption on the other side of grief.

Intermezzo, Sally Rooney, Faber and Faber.