• Intermezzo
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  • Intermezzo
  • Intermezzo
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  • Intermezzo

Intermezzo

Fiction, Fiction & Poetry, General Fiction
Hardback Published on: 24/09/2024
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Bookseller Reviews

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Intermezzo
Intermezzo
A stunning novel regarding the relationship between two brothers after the death of their father. Rooney, once again, provides us with her nuanced approa... READ MORE
Ronnie, Bluewater Bookseller
Intermezzo
Intermezzo is the novel that 'Normal People' stans have been waiting for.
Sally Rooney is not for everyone, but I am SO glad she is for me. As always her writing is introspective and revealing to the nth degree. My mind always fe... READ MORE
Bree M (@bookshopbree)
Intermezzo
An absolute triumph.
This is Sally Rooney at her best. This is human love, loss, heartbreak and pain in all their beautiful complexity. This is the relationship between two bro... READ MORE
Liv, Newbury
Intermezzo
Sally Rooney’s Magnum Opus
With Intermezzo, Sally Rooney once again tackles what it means to love. Following brothers Ivan and Peter, grief-stricken after the death of their father, ... READ MORE
Luke Hartigan
Intermezzo
Rooney’s best yet
I loved the characters. Whilst they were not always likeable, Rooney has the ability to make you really empathise with people even if you don’t agree with ... READ MORE
Lauren
Intermezzo
Heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time!
Rooneys writing is the epitome of gut wrenching and heart breaking literature. Normal People will always hold a special place in my heart but I think Inter... READ MORE
Chloe at Trafford Centre
Intermezzo
My first Sally Rooney read!
As someone who has never read a Sally Rooney novel, I am so happy that her writing worked for me. I have never been a big literary fiction reader, because ... READ MORE
Isobel Holmes
Intermezzo
Quintessential Sally Rooney
A Story following the lives of two completely different brothers after the loss of their father. Romance, grief and familial challenges, this is a perfect... READ MORE
Mia at Bromley
Intermezzo
An intimate, loving novel about healing relationships.
This is Sally Rooney's best novel yet. It has a maturity and a complexity that makes reading it a real pleasure, and characters so real that you could touc... READ MORE
Leonie
Intermezzo
No mere, trifling "step up"...
It would appear Sally Rooney has finally grown into a writer worthy of the hype. Gone are the promising yet tentative dabs of a young artist, to be repl... READ MORE
Aaron Myles
Intermezzo
Sally Rooney's best by far!
i don't know if i have the words to truly encapsulate this book right now, but it was blindingly beautiful. i loved the complex relationships (platonic and... READ MORE
Libby Low
Intermezzo
gorgeous and moving
Thank you to Faber & Faber for the advanced proof copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This is a stunning and delicately layered examinat... READ MORE
Sophie Cook
Intermezzo
The rewarding and addictive read you’d hoped for
To get straight into it, the great contradiction of this book: some of the poetic prose is simply sublime, important, necessary and intoxicating; at other ... READ MORE
Phill - Waterstones Bookseller
Intermezzo
Sally Rooney at her best
This is somewhat of a departure for Rooney in terms of the characters but she's done it brilliantly. As always, her prose is wonderful and the characters s... READ MORE
Sarah Baddeley
Intermezzo
Fantastic!
I believe we all wonder sometimes what is going on in the other person's head, what are they feeling, what is it like to be them, what does the world look ... READ MORE
Agnieszka Matheson
Intermezzo
Rooney fans won't be disappointed
Avid Rooney readers won't be disappointed by her fourth novel, which examines - with characteristic delicacy - the strained relationship between two grievi... READ MORE
Logan at Greenwich
Intermezzo
Cinematic!
Thank you to the Publisher for an advance copy of this novel. Brat summer would not have been complete without getting to read Rooney’s most cinematic, ... READ MORE
Chloë at Cheltenham Waterstones
Intermezzo
back on form
I loved Ivan and Margaret. Felt a real affinity with them and everything they were dealing with. Having lost my dad this year, there are these insights i... READ MORE
Grace at Waterstones Belfast
Intermezzo
Considered, artful prose. Beautiful execution!
Rooney holds all the power... she knows how to finely weave the tangled dysfunctional webs together, to have us so tightly bound, only to leave us unraveli... READ MORE
Laionie Sarson
Intermezzo
Everything I didn’t know I needed!
Sally Rooney has seriously upped her game with this one! The characters in Intermezzo are so beautifully human, and Rooney delves into their grieving, heal... READ MORE
Hermione

Synopsis

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.

  • Publisher: Faber & Faber
  • ISBN: 9780571365463
  • Number of pages: 432
  • Dimensions: 216 x 135 mm

Customer Reviews

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Intermezzo
Sally Rooney's best novel yet
Oh Sally you are so good at breaking hearts
Violet Daniels
Intermezzo
Logic of chess versus chaos of life
For me, Rooney’s early novels found their natural home on the screen, however Intermezzo is an absolute tour de force. It has a plot that engages with both... READ MORE
Nicola Waterstones Eastbourne
Intermezzo
A story of two brothers!
Peter and Ivan Koubek are brothers and as well as having an age difference of ten years they’re completely different in character. It’s difficult to giv... READ MORE
Joan Clapham
Intermezzo
Compact and complex
The sampler introduces us to two brothers- Peter and Ivan Koubek. One a lawyer, the other a chess player. They are both dealing with the recent death of th... READ MORE
Gerry Lee
Intermezzo
a step forward for rooney as a literary fiction author
sally rooney has such a talent for writing about interpersonal relationships and human connection, and it’s something i’ll never tire of reading. interm... READ MORE
leah / @lbhreads
Intermezzo
Brilliant!
Dashed out to buy it on day one and read it straight away. A great read, clearly an excellent author. But Normal People still holds by heart. Happy to r... READ MORE
Fiona Sharp
Intermezzo
Best Rooney so far
Just a beautiful book. Definitely her best so far. I savoured this text and really enjoyed the different perspectives, internal dialogue, literary referenc... READ MORE
Alison Lynch
Intermezzo
outstanding
Overall Duel perspective books are a fantastic read and sally rooney has done a fantastic job on creating a story with intense character depth and an amazi... READ MORE
Olivia  Carkeek
Intermezzo
Characters which breathe off the page.
Rarely have I read a contemporary novelist with such a capacity to create full, convincing, multi-faceted characters. Each of the big four in this novel st... READ MORE
John Pownall