When Sally Rooney’s newest book, Intermezzo, came out, I immediately wanted to go buy it. I love her book Normal People, and was excited for another of her stories. But for some reason I just never went and got it. Luckily, Cupid bought it for me on Valentine’s day, so I took this assignment as my opportunity to dive in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Intermezzo is a story about two brothers who lose their father after his battle with cancer. This is one of those books where the chapters switch perspectives back and forth. When they’re done well, I love these books. Sometimes, I find that authors don’t find a distinct enough voice for each character to make it clear which character is talking or *thinking* when. Sally Rooney, however, does a great job of this. A review on the back of the book from Alexandra Schwartz of The New Yorker says that Sally Rooney’s “power is as a psychological portraitist.” Based on Normal People, and what I have read of this book so far, I find that to be a perfect description of her writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The brothers who are the main characters of this book are Peter and Ivan. Peter is a handsome and successful lawyer in his 30’s, but his character kind of defies the expectation of those traits. He is self-medicating pretty heavily to sleep after the death of his father, and he is also involved in a sexual relationship with a young woman (a student, I think?) named Naomi, while also in an emotional relationship with an old flame (and love of his life, I think?) Sylvia. The dissonance between what we expect from a successful lawyer and what we get makes for a bit of a confusing<\/strong> read during Peter’s chapters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ivan is the younger brother. He is in his 20’s, and maybe a professional chess player, but not really. He doesn’t actually have a real job. My understanding is just that he plays chess competitively for money sometimes. He is handsome too (I think), but cares very little about material things according to Peter, which makes hiM less desirable, and makes his mother look upon him with disgust. Ivan is seriously socially inept, and I think in him I have just discovered the most relatable<\/strong> character of all time. Ivan was a lot closer with his father than Peter was, but Peter seems to be taking the loss harder. It seems to me that this stems from Peter’s regret for never getting to know his own father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I said “I think” a lot before. That’s because, first of all, this is a long book and I am not super far into it yet. But also, the narrative style leaves some things out in the way of explicit explanation, and you have to make some assumptions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, my first experience with this book is confusion. The things that confuse me in this book come from Peter’s chapters, and it started right away because he was the first narrator. Peter’s chapters consist of nearly no complete sentences. His thoughts are fully broken and scattered. When I opened the book and started reading, I was like, huh? What is this guy trying to communicate? The book starts like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Didn’t seem fair on the young lad. That suit at the funeral. With the braces on his teeth, the supreme discomfort of the adolescent. On such occasions, one could almost come to regret one’s own social brilliance. Gives him the excuse, or gives him in any case someone at whom to look pleadingly between the mandatory handshakes. God love him. Nearly twenty-three now: Ivan the terrible. Difficult actually to believe the suit on him. Picked it up perhaps in some little damp-smelling second-hand shop for the local hospice, paid in cash, rode it home on his bicycle crumpled in a reusable plastic bag. Yes, that in fact would make sense of it, would bring into alignment the suit in its resplendent ugliness and the personality of the younger brother, ten years younger. Not without style in his own way. Certain kind of panache in his absolute disregard for the material world. Brains and beauty, an aunt said once. About them both. Or was it Ivan brains and Peter beauty. Thanks, I think. He crosses Watling Street now towards the apartment that is not an apartment, the house that is not a house, eleven or is it twelve days since the funeral, back in town. Back at work, such as it is. Or back anyway to Naomi’s place. And what will she be wearing when she answers the door. Slides his phone from his pocket into the palm of his hand as he reaches the front step, cool tactility of the screen as it lights under his fingers, typing. Outside. Evenings drawing in now and she’s back at her lectures, presumably. No reply but she sees the message, and then the predictable sequence, the so familiar and by now indirectly arousing sequence of sounds as behind the front door she comes up the old basement staircase and into the hall. Classical conditioning: how did it take so long to figure that out? Common sense. Not that. Everyday experience. The relationship of memory and feeling. The opening door.<\/p>\nPg. 1-2<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I didn’t understand who was talking and what they were talking about. I could take away the general gist, but who was I hearing the story from? I eventually realized that the way to understand was to push through the internal monologue stuff that was so broken, and get to the dialogue. That made sense. He speaks in real sentences. And that is when things got clearer. His thoughts are so jumbled because he hasn’t slept in days and he’s on multiple different drugs to keep himself awake during the day, and to try to sleep at night. You learn this only through his conversations with Naomi and Sylvia. And even though it was really confusing, I also really liked it and found it really fascinating. A successful lawyer who speaks eloquently and presents himself so well; but whose thoughts are a mess. I can see both while I am reading. A psychological portraitist!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ivan’s chapters are where I experienced identification (I also identified with a very small aspect of Peter’s character as well, but I’ll touch on that later). It becomes so immediately clear when it is his turn to narrate that he is not very well versed in social interaction. He is awkward to a point of pain. Me too, Ivan. Before a chess event, it is explained how Ivan has learned not to think about the event that is about to happen, lest he begin experiencing some serious physical anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On certain occasions he actually has been sick, after contemplating too deeply the inexorable approach of a scheduled event.<\/p>\nPg. 26<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This is exactly how I am. If I have something coming up where I know a lot of (or, like, 5) people will be watching me, I will be sick to my stomach at the very idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another thing that comes with the territory of this social anxiety is the idea that every system works against me. Why can everyone else find anything they need and I can’t? Other people know people who know people who can get them what they need. Ivan and I? We don’t have that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How often in his life he has found himself a frustrated observer of apparently impenetrable systems, watching other people participate effortlessly in structures he can find no way to enter or even understand.<\/p>\nPg. 89<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This quote comes when Ivan is trying to find out how to place his dog into a foster system. I think of when I very recently was trying to schedule an appointment with a psychologist. People go to the doctor literally all the time! But it was absolutely impossible for me to understand how to find one for myself. This quote put into words an experience I have had so often, but have never been able to describe. The absolute impossibility of understanding how to interact with something so normal and mundane. Thanks, Sally Rooney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ivan and I are both classic over-thinkers. Ivan meets and takes a liking to a woman named Margaret, and despite the fact that his affections are pretty clearly returned, he wasn’t sure she was going to call him again after they first met. He says this to her:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m happy you called, he says. Like, if I’m honest, I didn’t think you were going to. I suppose it doesn’t matter to say all this now. But after I got home again at the weekend, I started getting kind of anxious, like maybe I did something wrong, or, I don’t know. Do you ever go back over things in your head, and you’re thinking, why did I say those things, or why did I do that? I guess you probably don’t, because everything you say is interesting. But I do that all the time, going back over things. And getting kind of mad with my-self. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I was just saying, I’m happy you called me. Because I guess, it makes me feel a bit more like, you probably don’t hate me after all.<\/p>\nPg. 97<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Do I ever go back over things in my head? Oh, only everything I have ever said in my entire life so far. Maybe I should’ve added this. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that part. And most importantly, do they hate me now? It was weird what I said. They probably hate me now… If only Ivan and I had rewind and edit buttons for conversation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The confusion I have experienced in this book has been prompted from the use of the stream of consciousness. Peter’s chapters are just jumbled up thoughts, with little completion to any one. It truly is just a stream of every single thing he is thinking, and that stream is super confusing. Since his stream of consciousness is confusing and scattered, I experienced confusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I must add that at one point in this stream of consciousness, I experienced identification with Peter. It came in this passage:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A purring mechanical tone tells him the call is ringing while he sits on the sofa unlacing his shoes. Home from work late, Tuesday night, awkward time to call, and never texted beforehand, almost as if, yes, hoping no one will answer. Duty discharged in that case. Diphenhydramine with a glass of red wine, see what people are saying on the internet. Fall asleep with the lights on for an hour or two if he’s lucky. Wake up again and try something stronger. Watch in claustrophobic dread the passing of hours, scorched feeling in his eyelids blinking. Three in the morning, four, another Xanax, open a new browser tab to type out: insomnia psychosis. psychosis average age of onset. can’t sleep going insane. About to hang up when with a dropping sound the call connects and the voice of his brother is saying: Hello? Oddly normal the way be says that when answering the phone. Makes him sound so adult and reasonable. But what does Peter expect him to say: nothing? Just pick up without a word and breathe audibly into the receiver? Hey, says Peter.<\/p>\nPg. 57<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I completely identified with Peter’s insomnia, and his late night internet searches about it. I have been experiencing such terrible insomnia lately, it makes me feel absolutely crazy. When I read that line, I laughed a bit and just thought, “wow, me!” So Peter’s stream of consciousness let me identify with him a little bit, but also Peter is gross so I will leave it at this: I relate to his sleepin’, not to his creepin’! (Gabby came up with that line, she deserves the credit.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Figuring out what led to my identification with Ivan is a little bit trickier. Looking at the list, I am thinking it might be the technology “opportunity to observe.” Lots of times, a scene is set up in the story and we just read about what Ivan is doing. Ivan displays a variety of different behaviors and talks to different characters, responding to each one differently, and for a few pages I was just reading about his behavior in a room full of other people. This gave me the chance to recognize what Ivan was feeling and therefore, what I was seeing in him that I also see in me. I am also identifying with Ivan through the use of soliloquy. Even though some of his relatable thoughts are spoken aloud (like when he asked Margaret if she ever goes back over things in her head), they are revealing of his internal conflicts that I relate to very deeply. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sally Rooney. Intermezzo: A Novel.<\/em> Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cover of “Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Sally Rooney’s newest book, Intermezzo, came out, I immediately wanted to go buy it. I love her book Normal People, and was excited for another of her stories. 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Narrative Technologies Prompting My Experience <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Works Cited<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Featured Image <\/h2>\n\n\n\n