I’m not quite sure what to say about this book. I think Sally Rooney is an excellent writer and what she does best is get inside the heads of people who are struggling in their relationships–siblings, romantic partners, friends, whatever. And really, isn’t everyone struggling? I think that’s what makes her characters powerful: they represent the everyday challenges, the awkward conversations, the emotionally charged reactions that are hard to address and easy to ignore.

I really liked her first book, Normal People, and I also liked her third book, Beautiful World Where Are You (I never read her second, Conversations with Friends). Some critics say this one, Intermezzo, is her best. The problem for me is that while the characters and situations were new, the feelings and interactions felt like a mashup of previous books, so they didn’t really seem new. And to be honest, I got bored.

Intermezzo revolves around two brothers: Ivan, the awkward 22-year-old chess prodigy, and Peter, the mid 30s suave lawyer. They are both grieving the recent death of their father, but being as opposite as any brothers can be, they cope very differently. Both embark on new romantic relationships, but Peter is also in love with the previous girlfriend, so this becomes a story of two men and three women fumbling along in a lot of messiness. And that’s where it feels too much like her previous characters who are also fumbling along. The messiness differs in each book, but the fumbling feels too similar.

If this were my first Sally Rooney novel, I think I’d feel differently. She does cool things like change her sentence structure depending on the perspective she’s portraying. In Ivan’s chapters, the details are clear and analytical but anxious and rambling. In Peter’s, they’re harder to follow, with fragmented thoughts and frazzled actions, especially as drugs and a fast paced lifestyle muddy his path. 

Rooney is a talented writer, for sure, so it felt weird to skim read the second half and even weirder that I didn’t really care if I finished it. I feel like she needs a fresh approach in whatever comes next for her.