Publication day for a new Sally Rooney novel can feel like Christmas for fans of her work. It’s heartening to see the amount of interest a single book can generate in this day and age, and with Rooney we get a full circus – early opening hours, signing events with queues snaking around the streets of London for miles on end, branded merchandise including dog bowls and takeaway coffee cups.
It’s fun, exciting, and can give hope to aspiring authors. But once the glitter and adrenaline settles, we are left with the most important element: the words, the work. It has been a fortnight now since Intermezzo came out into the world.
Intermezzo, Rooney’s fourth novel and her longest one yet, tells a story of two grieving brothers in the aftermath of the funeral of their father, and the various complicated but very human relationships they navigate in this difficult time. It is also Rooney’s most ambitious work yet. The craft is impeccable, and the similarities to Joyce have been drawn for a reason: the novel is full of meandering streams of consciousness, looking closely at the brothers’ lives and motivations, following the main protagonists almost too close for comfort.
This is, however, distinctively a Sally Rooney book. She’s got this amazing ability to create sentences sharp as the edge of a knife, and some that can make the reader forget to breathe with their simple and powerful ways, yet remain just far enough from becoming banal.
But Intermezzo is not Rooney’s best. At times it feels overdrawn, the emotional complexities are often going nowhere and leave a disappointing aftertaste. The dual-perspective point of view of the book would work better if equal care and time were assigned to both brothers. For a book that stays so close to their characters it felt like there was at times too much depth without a realistic reason.
All of this to say that Sally Rooney is one of the most important writers of modern times, and everything she did write – and all that she will continue to write – will be powerful in its own way. She is a unique talent and it is clear that Rooney celebrates and respects a novel as an artform in itself, which is more exciting to a reader than any hype and limited-edition merchandise could ever be.
Intermezzo, Sally Rooney (Faber)
Price: £18/£12.99 Ebook/£26.99 audiobook. Info: here
words GOSIA BUZZANCA