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.
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.
Add to your library to track progress and write reviews
Add to your library to track progress and write reviews
Find Intermezzo Sally Rooney in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find Intermezzo Sally Rooney in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
2 books in catalog
Exploring contemporary intimate relationships, social class dynamics, and political anxiety through sharp, dialogue-driven prose, modern Irish fiction has drawn widespread international readerships. Sally Rooney emerged with her 2017 debut novel and achieved widespread recognition with Normal People, a novel detailing the fluctuating bond between two Irish students as they navigate social hierarchy, intimacy, and mental health.
Born on February 20, 1991, in Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland, Sally Rooney grew up as the middle of three children in an arts-focused household where her mother served as director of a community arts center. She attended Trinity College Dublin, where she completed her degree and developed her literary voice. Before her books reached a wide public, her poetry, short stories, and essays appeared in literary publications such as Granta, The Dublin Review, The White Review, The Stinging Fly, London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and the Winter Pages anthology. She later settled in Dublin, where she continues to live and write.
Rooney published her debut novel, Conversations with Friends, in 2017, establishing her focus on youth, romance, and ideological debate. Her 2018 novel Normal People, which developed from characters originally introduced in her 2016 short story 'At the Clinic', received broad critical acclaim and award nominations. Rooney expanded into television production and screenwriting by co-writing and executive producing the 2020 Hulu and BBC television miniseries adaptation of Normal People. She subsequently published Beautiful World, Where Are You in 2021 and her fourth novel, Intermezzo, in 2024, while her debut novel was also adapted into a television miniseries in 2022.
Rooney's fiction frequently investigates the intersection of personal desire, economic inequality, and political commitment in twenty-first-century society. Her characters—often young adults living in or around Dublin—wrestle with class distinctions, social status, and artistic ambitions while navigating complicated romantic and platonic connections. Through precise dialogue and direct narrative perspective, her novels probe how systemic financial pressures and social structures shape private emotional lives and interpersonal communication.
Technically, her work relies on close third-person or first-person observation, combining psychological acuity with understated prose. In novels like Intermezzo, she expands her thematic range to encompass broader age gaps, grief, and family dynamics alongside romantic relationships, examining how individuals search for meaning, connection, and moral clarity within complex social realities.
2 books in catalog
Exploring contemporary intimate relationships, social class dynamics, and political anxiety through sharp, dialogue-driven prose, modern Irish fiction has drawn widespread international readerships. Sally Rooney emerged with her 2017 debut novel and achieved widespread recognition with Normal People, a novel detailing the fluctuating bond between two Irish students as they navigate social hierarchy, intimacy, and mental health.
Born on February 20, 1991, in Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland, Sally Rooney grew up as the middle of three children in an arts-focused household where her mother served as director of a community arts center. She attended Trinity College Dublin, where she completed her degree and developed her literary voice. Before her books reached a wide public, her poetry, short stories, and essays appeared in literary publications such as Granta, The Dublin Review, The White Review, The Stinging Fly, London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and the Winter Pages anthology. She later settled in Dublin, where she continues to live and write.
Rooney published her debut novel, Conversations with Friends, in 2017, establishing her focus on youth, romance, and ideological debate. Her 2018 novel Normal People, which developed from characters originally introduced in her 2016 short story 'At the Clinic', received broad critical acclaim and award nominations. Rooney expanded into television production and screenwriting by co-writing and executive producing the 2020 Hulu and BBC television miniseries adaptation of Normal People. She subsequently published Beautiful World, Where Are You in 2021 and her fourth novel, Intermezzo, in 2024, while her debut novel was also adapted into a television miniseries in 2022.
Rooney's fiction frequently investigates the intersection of personal desire, economic inequality, and political commitment in twenty-first-century society. Her characters—often young adults living in or around Dublin—wrestle with class distinctions, social status, and artistic ambitions while navigating complicated romantic and platonic connections. Through precise dialogue and direct narrative perspective, her novels probe how systemic financial pressures and social structures shape private emotional lives and interpersonal communication.
Technically, her work relies on close third-person or first-person observation, combining psychological acuity with understated prose. In novels like Intermezzo, she expands her thematic range to encompass broader age gaps, grief, and family dynamics alongside romantic relationships, examining how individuals search for meaning, connection, and moral clarity within complex social realities.
