Certainly, lukewarm things cannot be said about a book that has been defined as the most important publishing case of 2024. Presented to the Italian public on 12 November 2024, “Intermezzo” is the fourth volume published by Irish author Sally Rooney three years after her last work, “Where are you, beautiful world”, but sideways far from that product for certain reassuring verses.

Intermezzo tells the story of two brothers, Ivan and Peter, who, against the backdrop of Ireland which is experiencing the greatest media attention since the time of James Joyce, try to deal with the grief caused by the loss of their father. However, it is a partially choral novel, because the point of view is dribbled not only between the two male protagonists but also between their female counterparts, while maintaining the detachment of the third person narrator. Ivan lives a love story in which the strong age difference with Margaret, who is ten years older than him, weighs heavily, the other is trapped in a love triangle that is anything but enjoyable between the historic girlfriend-soul mate Sylvia is a lively, somewhat reckless girl who is the age of her little brother, Naomi.

The plot of the entire novel is rather sparse, with a slow and paced pace in more than 400 pages (compared to the 300 or so that Rooney had accustomed us to) almost to the point of exasperation, on which the internal dramas of the characters are grafted, which they are the mold of their time: if there is any merit to be given to Rooney – and which has been attributed to her on many occasions – it is the ability to be a faithful interpreter of certain characters and environments of her generation. In this case also tempering the self-referentiality (always denied by the writer) which transformed the past volumes into a sort of continuous recognition of the author’s traits in her female characters. Although Rooney stated in an interview that Intermezzo started out as the story of Margaret and her voice.

Impossibility is the primary theme

Of the many keys with which the book can be read, impossibility is one of the most decisive. First of all to communicate and express verbally but also physically the profound discomfort that grips all the characters and destines them to spend a more miserable day than the next. Between tears that are pushed back, blocked telephone numbers, dialogues that are telegrams compared to very long internal monologues, interrupted discussions, Ivan and Peter, but no less the satellite characters, know how to set up meadows of silences and abortive words, preventing them from build a form of alliance and invisible loyalty marked by common mourning. The attempts at reconciliation, built on very fragile foundations, of men who are profoundly unresolved, weak, suffering and incapable of carving out a defined role within their own lives, have failed. Certainly from two different points of view. More than thirty years old, Peter has already experienced the anguish of becoming an adult, while Ivan is still experiencing the process that will lead him to transform his naivety into the painful burden of his brother.

The construction of the dialogues is tiring both for those who experience it (ideally our characters, whom readers will choose whether to love, pity or despise) and finally for those who receive it: rejecting the classic approach of quotation marks and paragraphs, then enriched by systematic abuse of anacoluti (which almost makes one think that the absent verbs demonstrate the radical inability to act) what is constructed is a non-dialogue, which well represents the tenor of the characters’ ailments. Who – almost naively – are still convinced that by not dealing with their own internal disagreements (it is a bit like the intermezzo, the stasis that gives the volume its name) and by postponing the confrontation with their own irresolutions there may be some solution. Spoiler: there isn’t.

Old-fashioned and Dante-like female characters

More granitic is the way in which the female characters are depicted, in some ways antiquated and Dante-like in bearing the much heavier burdens that life has inflicted on them, with an almost stoic and terrifying dignity. There is Sylvia who lives in solitude the aftermath of the illness caused by a serious accident, making her a sort of Saint on earth. There is Margaret who had difficulty ending the relationship with her ex-husband suffering from alcoholism and was blamed for it, she too was an unjust martyr, she who “understands everything, literally everything”, surrounded by people who understand little or Nothing. Everyone is immersed in relational failures: from the divorce between the brothers’ father and their mother, Margaret’s separation, her bad relationship with her sister and mother, bonds with friends, undermined by the lack of complete trust, as well as from prejudice.

Women have the task of understanding, reasoning and trying to reconcile disagreements. Sometimes to abstain from any judgment (as in the scene – at times surreal – in which Peter tells his impassive mother that he uses cocaine every now and then) which would hurt the already battered male identity characterized by limits rather than possibilities. Other times to bring back to the logical level actions that have nothing logical (and here we go straight to the conversation on a problem of logic between Ivan and Sylvia).

It could have been a great novel about pain and the masculine, but it is still a project

Rooney’s attempt to approach such a complex theme starting from a basic plot is certainly fascinating and in some ways successful. The gloom that drags on for the entire novel, however, is diluted in the finale, in a waltz of a few pages where time shortens and expands in an illegible way and it is time to let good feelings triumph. But how? In a way that is not totally convinced, as if the author herself had not withstood the weight of having to write a happy ending after having articulated so much suffering, as if her knowledge of happiness was at scholastic level, as Ivan and Peter experience it to the sound of “I love you”, pats on the back and warm tears now free to flow. What could have been a great novel about pain and the masculine is still a project, a tension towards lyricism that does not fully justify the enormous hype caused by the release of the book. For which, however, no responsibility can be attributed to Rooney, but rather to worlds or generations that cyclically seek out singers ready to sing their sorrows. And for publishing houses to produce new literary phenomena.