Intermezzo

A Novel

By: Sally Rooney

Narrated by: Éanna Hardwicke

Long-listed, Washington Post Best Books of the Year, 2024

New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, Audible.com Best of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, Time Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, The Guardian (UK) Best Books of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, NPR Best Book of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, CPL: Chicago Public Library Best of the Best, 2024

"[B]rilliant narration by the actor Éanna Hardwicke"—Financial Times

"Éanna Hardwicke's narration highlights the rich emotionality of Rooney's newest novel. Hardwicke's smooth voice shifts to capture every mood—becoming desperately angry, bitter, and frantic yet also achingly tender, patient, and loving—as he performs a story of two grieving brothers."—AudioFile (Earphones Award Winner)

This program is read by actor Éanna Hardwicke, known for his role in Hulu's Normal People.

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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2024 Sally Rooney (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Bestseller Rooney returns with a boldly experimental and emotionally devastating story of estrangement . . . The novel’s deliberate pacing veers from the propulsiveness of Normal People and the deep character work contrasts with the topicality of Beautiful World, but in many ways this feels like Rooney’s most fully realized work, especially as she channels the modernist styles of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf . . . Even the author’s skeptics are liable to be swept away by this novel’s forceful currents of feeling.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves . . . The characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real . . . Her grandmaster status remains intact.”
—Kirkus Reviews

My favorite of Rooney’s books

I loved the intimacy with which the love affair between Ivan and Margaret is drawn. From the first moments it feels as if it’s a relationship between intellectual and sensual equals.

No one writes female sexuality better than Sally Rooney.

I was less well persuaded by Peter and his entanglements, in the both women seem slightly implausible but the raging anger and resentment the two brothers share feels entirely true.

I love her command of physical detail, rainy streets, silent car rides, and— my god— the crisp brilliance of her dialogue

I love this book

Lusciously descriptive of human frailty

No one can describe the human condition as well as Sally Rooney. Every sentence has been constructed to add value. Description of the settings will leave little to the imagination of a future screen writer. It’s all there, color, texture, temperature, even street venues. The emotion, the ambivalence, the guilt, the intellect . . .this novel could be the text in a Psych 301 college class: The Emotion of Human Psychology. Her novel has so much to unpack, that it would be uncivilized to listen at any playback speed faster than normal. (1.0)

The best

The world needs more sally Rooneys . My god does she understand the human condition
I’ll wait for the mini series

Lulled

I very much enjoyed this book, most especially because of the narrator. His voice was so soothing and somewhat mesmerizing.

Loved it!

Amazing story and great narrator. I didn’t want the book to end. One of my favorites of Sally Rooney

Fabulous narrator! I loved the complex characters!

I loved the depth of these characters, and the reader was awesome, really brought them all to life!

Grief

Beautiful language thoughtful observations. brilliant. I know these characters like I know my own family .

Drug On

I chose this book because it was on the best sellers list and had great reviews here. Normally I get through these in a few days, this took me a few months (once I start a book I have to finish). It was slow, it spent way too much time having the characters repeat the same cycles, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. It only finally started to grab my attention when there was 2 hours left of the story, then it left me hanging. Overall, had the potential to be really good, but tried too hard to be smart and ended up being frustrating.

Excellent writing

Sally Rooney developed the characters and their intricacies in a way that makes you feel like you could be in their minds. The story line was heartbreaking and poetic all at once and for that reason, you can’t stop reading. I loved every second!

Slow start with a complex ending

Enjoyed diving into the brothers’ romantic relationships, their own relationship with each other and the growth of the brothers after the passing of their father. Both were going through their own issues but neither wanted to be supportive of each other because of their childhood dynamic. Classic story of two siblings growing up hating each other then finally coming together after maturity. Maturing is a complex and long process.