Thoughts on "Intermezzo" (Sally Rooney)

 

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Some thoughts about Sally Rooney's new novel 'Intermezzo'.

The book has some interesting symmetries. The older brother, human-rights lawyer Peter Koubek, aged 32, is involved with a girl, Naomi, 23, similar in age to his younger brother, the chess-prodigy Ivan, who is 22. To complicate matters Peter also has an enduring relationship with a long-term girlfriend (and former lover) of his own age, an accomplished academic who has suffered a life-changing accident.

Ivan soon becomes involved with a woman, Margaret, who is 36, fourteen years older than him. All the characters worry about these age differences; how they will be perceived by their friends and colleagues with whom they are in the usual network of personal and professional relationships. 

Another symmetry that is interesting: Ivan is outwardly awkward, on the autistic spectrum, certainly socially dysfunctional; but inwardly he's calm, intelligent and sensible. Peter, on the other hand, is outwardly successful and professional but inwardly is a complete mess: depressed, dropping tranquillisers, drunk and often aggressive. 

Sylvia and Naomi, the two women with whom Peter is involved, and the older woman Margaret with whom Ivan is involved, are also well realised supporting characters.

The dynamics of this 'almost ménage à cinq' carry conviction. The narrative arc is tragedy and the occasional comedy of errors as people misunderstand each other all the time, particularly each other's motives and thoughts, and make few efforts to discover what people really think, but simply react, emotionally and generally negatively to each other.

The resulting interpersonal dynamic, in an uncanny way, almost reflects a chess game of its own. Does this work in the novel? With only the smallest effort you can believe the tortured path the characters walk down, which sustains itself over many weeks, and just digs the holes in their relationships deeper and deeper, damaging their lives, as the characters’ self-esteem deflates on a continuing, ever-downward trajectory.

I was wondering how Sally Rooney would pull all this together and she does - just about. As the novel progresses it does become more engrossing and page-turning, as one cares more and more about the characters. 

Is this a novel you could recommend to your wife and servants? Well, there are sex scenes which are somewhat explicit. Are they necessary for the plot? Yes - and pornographic they are not. Some people don't want to read about the sexual side of people's lives; they would find the matter-of-fact way in which these issues are addressed in the book something that they could have a problem with.

Another issue for some will be the introversion and intensity of the characters. Sally Rooney specialises in characters who belong to the unsuccessful wing of the overproduced-elite: they are well-educated, cultured, rather introverted, fashionably left-wing, caring, intelligent, neurotic, alienated, in precarious jobs they hate, and feeling the anomie and alienation of metropolitan atomisation; they flirt with liberal activism, nihilism and the Catholic Church. 

There are people who might want to shake such people and say, ‘Get a grip!’. If that’s your view, don’t waste your time with this novel; to read ‘Intermezzo’ is to spend time, indeed to wallow, in interminable existential angst. Rooney’s writing is not dissimilar in theme to that of Michel Houellebecq's ​’Annihilation’ which I’m reading at the moment and with which I am equally impressed.

The take-home message of ‘Intermezzo’ for me: continue the revolution in Ireland; as Marx advised, break down primitive, oppressive social norms in the name of freedom, love and social solidarity; dare to be unconventional because we are all unique with our own destinies of liberation. I note that the organised left and the feminists really don’t like this book, but that’s because it doesn’t conform to their preferred stereotypes; luckily Sally Rooney has always been a better novelist than that: she does not do agitprop.