A Weeper for English Majors

Why Dwight Garner and I loved this novel

Author Sally Rooney and her new novel, Intermezzo

To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:

Yes, Please, Waiter

It’s been a long time since I’ve cried real tears at the end of a book.

Yesterday that was my reaction to finishing Intermezzo, the latest novel by Irish super-author Sally Rooney. It is the story of Peter and Ivan, two brothers grieving over the passing of their father and tangled up in complicated romantic relationships.

As I prepared to share my feelings about the book this morning, I remembered that I had first learned of it from a review by Dwight Garner in September.

Last week Garner updated his rave appraisal of the novel. He is no less over the moon about it, I was glad to see. But he has added a wry account of what he calls a “Sally Rooney backlash.”

“Her success rankles,” Garner writes. He quotes the novelist Peter De Vries as having the ambition to attract a mass audience large enough for his elite audience to despise. For Sally Rooney, who is 33 years old, this book might signify Mission Accomplished.

Her 2018 novel, Normal People, was made into a BBC and Hulu series that I loved, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal. I think I watched the Hulu series based on her debut novel, Conversations with Friends, but to be honest I don’t remember that one as well.

For Intermezzo, Rooney chose a stream-of-consciousness writing style without standard punctuation—no quotation or questions marks. It took some getting used to. By the end of the novel I realized how those choices made the narrative feel eerily immersive.

Ivan, the younger brother, is a chess prodigy who meets a woman named Sylvia at an exhibition where he defeats 10 players at once. He is 22; she is 36.

When Peter first hears of the relationship he dismisses it rudely because of the age differential. Peter’s romantic life is its own mess, and the brothers become estranged through most of the novel.

It’s because Rooney makes the pain between the brothers so believable and so vivid that the book’s final pages touched me so powerfully.

Dwight Garner, who reads a lot more books than I do, asserts that Rooney in her four novels has written about “love in its various permutations, the minutiae of falling in and out of it” as well as anyone alive.

“It’s as if she were Iris Murdoch or Edna O’Brien with a three-book deal at Harlequin Romance,” he writes. My AI Pin explained why Garner chose those two authors for his sly comparison:

Iris Murdoch and Edna O'Brien are both known for their psychological depth and exploration of complex emotional and philosophical themes. Dwight Garner's comparison suggests that 'Intermezzo' combines these high literary qualities with the more mainstream elements of a Harlequin Romance.

Channeling the late Anthony Bourdain’s life-affirming exhortations, Garner recalls the TV star’s advice to “Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce.”

Says Garner:

“Intermezzo” is Sally Rooney with a bit more butter and cream. Yes, please, waiter. Call me a fool for love, but this oft-jaundiced reader found this meal to be discerning, fattening, old-school and delicious.

Bon appétit!