Introduction

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A National Indie Bestseller
Short-listed for the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year
Finalist for the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year

Named a Best Book of the Year and a Critics’ Pick by The New York Times
Named an Essential Read by The New Yorker
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, Financial Times, Vogue, The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, Vox, The Times (UK), Apple Books, and more
A USA Today, People, and Associated Press Top 10 Book of the Year

One of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2024
One of Chicago Public Library’s Favorite Books of the Year

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family?but especially love?from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties?successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women?his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude?a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

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Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

1. The novel explores the complex and often strained relationship between brothers Peter and Ivan. How do their differing personalities and emotional needs shape the tensions and power dynamics between them?

2. The relationships between Peter and Naomi, and perhaps more notably due to their genders, Ivan and Margaret, feature a decade plus age gap. How do the characters react to these gaps, both in relation to each other and to external perceptions? What presumptions did you have about age gap relationships before beginning this novel, and did the novel challenge any of them?

3. Contrast Peter's relationships with Sylvia and Naomi. How does what he seek and get out of each relationship differ? Discuss the different types of love that Rooney explores.

4. Intermezzo has been described as a "chess book without much chess in it." Discuss the significance of chess in the novel - both as a hobby/profession for Ivan and as a metaphor.

5. A recurring theme in Rooney's novels is what makes a life worth living, and what it means to be morally "good" or "right." How does Rooney continue to expore these questions in "Intermezzo"?

6. "Intermezzo" is a book of love and loss. What emotions did you feel as you read the novel? Did any of the story make you cry?

7. If you've read Rooney's previous novels, how did this one compare in style, themes, and impact?

8. Rooney narrates the novel from three perspectives: Peter, Ivan, and Ivan's love interest Margaret. Why do you think Rooney chose these three as her narrators? How do their styles of narration differ, and what do these differences tell you about their characters? Did you miss hearing from Sylvia and Naomi's perspectives?

9. What did you think of the ending of the novel? Did you think it ended on a hopeful note? What do you think will happen to the characters and their relationships? Will they stay together? Should they?

10. In chess, an "intermezzo," or "in-between move" is an unexpected move, one that typically forces an immediate response from the opponent. In music, an "intermezzo" is a short, connecting interlude between two longer pieces. Why do you think Rooney chose this as the title of her novel?

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