emma's Reviews > Intermezzo

this book was the most exciting news of my year and i got engaged the week it was announced.

somehow, it still exceeded my life-altering, world-centering, unrealistic-to-the-point-of-being-annoying expectations.

with every book, sally rooney seems to challenge herself in a new way, showing that in the years since her last release while we've all been pining and watching paul mescal fan edits she's been ever (somehow! still!) building on her craft. in beautiful world, where are you, for example, she displayed a totally new and mesmerizing use of visual language and natural motif that i fell in love with.

here, her use of perspective is stunning. i'm a multi-pov hater, but this manages to feel like something entirely different even as it follows the interiority of three characters. it seamlessly transitions between the three while still being vividly distinct: peter's staccato trains of thought, margaret's quiet self-reflection, ivan's anxious rambling. i've never read anything like it.

decisions like the little we see from within the two female characters in peter's orbit, and are immersed in the world of ivan's, feels so true to their characters and to their stories — and such an interesting facet to the characteristic sociopolitical explorations that are the true gem of rooney's writing.

rooney also challenges herself to create characters who are simultaneously unlikable and real, making decisions that threaten to get you to put the book down and sigh while being mercilessly relatable and easy to understand.

that's what we're working with here. a novel in which every choice is so thoughtful that you can spend a minute reading a page, then pause for five minutes just to consider it. which is basically what i did (read: make myself spend a month reading this because i so dreaded not having any more of it to draw out).

peter and ivan each represent a shade of misogyny, of straight-white-man-ism in modern society, that doesn't forgive itself even while it refuses to let you ignore their own humanity and histories.

peter's perspective, made up of brief ulyssean phrases and stunning descriptions, varies as much from ivan's terminally introspective one as the two brothers do from each other. 

rooney's past books have focused on waxing and waning romantic (and semi-romantic) relationships; beautiful world also features a platonic one at its core. this one takes as its subject siblings, at first nearly estranged, as they struggle toward each other.

anyway. i often hate multiple perspectives because it always feels there's one the author is more comfortable with, that the choice to distinguish the two is because they have to be different because they're different characters. rooney's decision is deliberate, each perspective difference thought out, and because of that both are wildly impressive.

i loved this book.

bottom line: all the it girls love intermezzo and all the it girls are right.

(thank you from the bottom of my heart to the publisher for the arc)
(buddy read of a lifetime with my favorite girl elle)