Sally Rooney's fourth novel, "Intermezzo," explores modern love and relationships, featuring keen observations and realistic dialogues. The story centers on two estranged brothers reuniting after their father's death, delving into their romantic relationships. Rooney, a private person, continues to grapple with fame while her Marxist views influence her writing.
Irish author Sally Rooney, hailed as the "voice of ageneration" after the runaway success of Normal People ,examines modern love in all its glory and friction in her fourth novel Intermezzo released next week. The book, out on Tuesday, includes all the elements ofRooney's hugely popular oeuvre: keen observations on relationships, spiky,realistic dialogues played out in Dublin houses, erotic scenes and existentialconversations on the patriarchy and capitalism. Having already created a number of striking femalecharacters, the story focuses on two estranged brothers, Peter and Ivan, whocome together in the weeks after their father's death, and the romanticrelationships they forge in a delicate period of mourning.
Six years after her debut novel Conversations withFriends (2017), the characters are now thirty-somethings like the author,and agonise over questions of motherhood and the climate crisis. Rooney's pared-back and realistic style has also evolved,with precise dialogues dipping into vivid, internal monologues. "I feel like the older I get the more freedom I have towrite about a greater range of life experiences," the 33-year-old authortold The Guardian in an interview.
'Private person' The publicity-shy Irish author, who grew up in the smalltown of Castlebar in County Mayo, was not prepared for the success of hersecond novel Normal People (2018), with its 2020 BBC televisionadaptation exploding in popularity during the lockdown. Rooney has enjoyed a rare literary breakthrough into themainstream, speaking to the angst of the times and capturing the ways in which"millennials" and internet-generations navigate friendships, romanticconnections and family relations. Her books have been cast by social media spaces like"BookTok" into a genre termed "sad girl lit" - a termRooney says she is unfamiliar with - centring young women with few materialproblems but who are fraught with internal turmoil.
She has won praise from the likes of Barack Obama and TaylorSwift. In 2022, Rooney was included in Time magazine's 100 mostinfluential people list, described as a "voice of a generation" andthe "Snapchat Salinger" - a tag that she is eager to distanceherself from. The success of Normal People felt "toomuch", she told the Guardian.
She added: Rooney still struggles with her notoriety, watched closelyby millions of fans but also detractors, who deem her writing"simple" and "overrated". With her unostentatious style and brunette bangs, she givesfew interviews, has stopped doing book tours, and says she is awkward whenasked to pose for photos. "I feel a lot of anxiety about my privacy and theprivacy of my family and loved ones.
.. I'm a very private person and I like togo unnoticed," Rooney told the Irish Times, adding that she sometimesregretted not writing under a pseudonym like Italian writer Elena Ferrante.
Marxist With five literary prizes and millions of copies sold,Rooney hopes to break free of the label of the "young novelist". After 10 years in Dublin and a stint in New York, she nowlives with her husband - a maths professor whom she met during university atTrinity College, Dublin - in the peaceful Irish countryside, near where shegrew up. Rooney is open about being a Marxist, her politics seepinginto the wry commentary by her fictional characters on topics ranging fromglobal wars to Dublin's housing crisis.
In 2021, she refused to allow her third book, Beautiful World, Where Are You? to be translated into Hebrew by anIsraeli publishing house due to her stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflictand in support of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement. Three years on, she says she will not "stay silent inthe face of genocide". "The horrors unfolding in Gaza feel to me like aturning point in history.
How are we allowing this to happen?", Rooneytold the Irish Times. Rooney has always denied writing autobiographical works butmany have seen her alter ego in the character of Alice, the young novelist inher third book who struggles to come to terms with her fame and takes refuge ina small coastal town in Ireland. "There is a sense of having lived a lot of life veryquickly, in quite a compressed sort of time frame", Rooney told Vogue when Beautiful World was published.
"I think the book dramatisessome of those challenges." REVIEW | Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney.
