W e think we know Sally Rooney. She writes novels about romantic and sexual entanglements that explore the complex possibilities of modern love. Marianne and Connell, the schoolfriend lovers who go at it, verbally and otherwise, for much of her second book, Normal People (2018), have already achieved their generation’s version of immortality: they have become memes.
But it’s easy to forget that Rooney’s fiction is also studded with warring siblings who patronise, abuse and lord it over each other. Marianne is horribly bullied by her older brother, and in Rooney’s previous novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021), Eileen is tyrannised via text message by her conceited sister. In Intermezzo , her most mature and moving book to date, the sibling conflict snatches the spotlight.
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