Intermezzo

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A National Indie Bestseller
Shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year

Finalist for the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year
One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year
One of The Globe and Mail's Best Books of 2024
One of The New York Times' Notable Books of 2024
One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Fiction Books of 2024
A New Yorker Best Book of 2024
One of The Guardian's Best Fiction Books of 2024
One of The London Standard's Best Books of 2024
One of Vogue's Best Books of 2024
One of Dazed 's Best Books of 2024

"There is so much restraint and melancholy profundity in [Rooney's] prose that when she allows the flood gates to open, the parched reader is willing to be swept out to sea." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"[Intermezzo] is a sadder, more mature read than Rooney's fans may have come to expect, but it retains her characteristic flair for making consciousness itself into a bingeable experience." --The New Yorker

"Intermezzo reaffirms Rooney's ability to capture the thrill and desperation of blooming romance, and to portray a microcosm of human existence with precision and insight."
--The Globe and Mail

"Rooney has discovered her full literary prowess--the reward is transcendent. . . . On finishing, I reflected: what would it be to hold a book with a soul? I felt I had. I felt changed, and utterly the same, the way it feels to read Larkin, or Tolstoy; felt, that for the time spent reading Intermezzo, I had gone more deeply into the world, reattuned to its networked thrum of pleasures, miseries, worries, and erotics that I might already have been aware of--but dully. Sublime literature will do this for you." --The Independent (UK)

"It is no small part of Rooney's achievement in her latest novel that she portrays physical desire with tact and tenderness, without giving in to soft-focus sentimentalism. . . . This bold, adventurous and captivating novel is a major addition to a body of work that never fails to surprise and engage." --The Irish Times

"[Rooney's] most fully developed and moving yet. . . . Intermezzo propels you to its well-earned, moving climax with nary a false move." --NPR

"The arrival of a new Sally Rooney novel is always cause for celebration; there is simply no other novelist chronicling the early adulthood of disaffected youth in the 21st century with more care and compassion. . . . In Intermezzo she broadens her scope and diverts from the casually complex conversational tone. . . . The book rewards the effort." --Vogue

"Something big has shifted here. . . . [Rooney] has also set out to probe something deeper and more enduring, more universally human: grief itself. . . . The way she supplies tidy closure, even as she subverts it, is a testament to her skill as a novelist." --The Atlantic

"The most talked-about author of her generation returns with a hotly awaited fourth book. . . . With a Joycean tang to the prose, it continues the deepening of her style since the crystalline insouciance of her 2017 debut Conversations with Friends." -The Guardian

"[Intermezzo's] characters [are] rendered in a kind of literary pointillism, interiorities that feel so real they vibrate, inwardness turned utterly out. . . . Internal monologue, often ungrammatical, almost staccato, merges with external dialogue, sliding between sensation, quotation and conversation, forming a picture of an inner life that is persuasive and eminently readable." --Financial Times

"In Intermezzo, [Rooney] writes about the helplessness of love with such searing clarity as to knock the wind out of you. . . . If a perfect Sally Rooney novel exists, this might just be it." --London Evening Standard

"Intermezzo is exquisite. . . . It's as tender and lovely as you could ask for, and beneath the elegant rise and fall of Rooney's oceanic sentences, the waters go deep." --Vox

"Intermezzo is perfect--truly wonderful--a tender, funny page-turner about the derangements of grief, and Rooney's richest treatment yet of messy romantic entanglements. . . . She leans fully into her gifts here: more characters, more complication, 'more life,' as Margaret thinks. . . . Is there a better novelist at work right now?" --The Observer

"That divide between what you believe and how you behave is one of the great themes of Intermezzo. . . . This is new and deeper territory for Rooney. . . . Intermezzo is in many ways a more truthful book. . . . The work of an artist who is continually trying out new techniques and continually growing." --Slate

"There's something brilliant and refreshing in Rooney's choice to follow the private love affairs of two siblings once so closely connected. . . . It's a pleasure, this time, to get under the skin and into the compassionate private realities of these brothers who misperceive each other as villains." --Lillian Fishman, The Washington Post

"[Rooney's] most mature and moving book to date. . . . I read it in a state of rapture--and relief. By rediscovering what the one thing the novel uniquely excels at--inwardness--Rooney shows she can tune into her characters' thoughts and catch them in the act of realising important things about themselves. Her work is much better for it." --The Sunday Times

"Intermezzo is scattered with the little gifts of psychological and emotional observation that are the most cherishable aspects of Rooney's talent." --The Times (UK)

"Her gifts are clear: writing realistic dialogue and creating believable characters; narrative economy and instinctive pacing; capturing the way we live as it moves and changes; depicting emotion. She has a particularly deft sense of the writer's role in a political landscape. . . . Rooney's novels stand for the notion that ordinary people should also be allowed the tumults and comforts of an emotional life, along with a sense that their existence is important because it is precious to the people they love." --London Review of Books

"In her astutely intimate style, Rooney wades through the convoluted emotions that follow tragedy: certainly heartache, but also relief and longing, guilt and joy, all on the cusp of transformation. . . . Her dialogue . . . lends a distinct musicality to her prose. . . . In the tense, messy contradictions of communal grief, Rooney weaves together beautiful whole cloth." --Associated Press

"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. Having the book's protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter's point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. . . . [T]he pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real. . . . [A] clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact." --Kirkus 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)

"[Intermezzo] might be her best yet: a tale of depth and grand sweep, an understated study of characters caught circling the margin of some great and unknown thing, and a diversion of pure enjoyment, too. Rooney's title tells us these brothers, in their love and fury for one another, are at an in-between moment, as she carefully, brilliantly writes them out of it." --Booklist (starred review)

"Sally Rooney's plangent, philosophical fourth novel reflects her growing literary and emotional maturity, while continuing her forensic dissection of intimacy, connection and desire. . . . This lyrical story of fraternal friction, emotional crisis and unexpected love interrogates the significance of romantic age gaps and relationship norms against a backdrop of societal judgement, overturning readers' expectations alongside those of its characters." --The Bookseller

"On the one hand, Intermezzo is a knotted, romantic melodrama that offers extensive insight into the rattled neuroses and intimate desires of its characters along with a substantial array of steamy love scenes. On the other hand, it's a layered book about the displacement of grief and the noise of modern life. In both respects, Rooney skillfully keeps her finger on the pulse of characters. . . . Intermezzo is studded with shimmering moments of pastoral stillness." --The Boston Globe

"[Rooney] examines modern love in all its glory and friction. . . . Rooney's pared-back and realistic style has also evolved, with precise dialogues dipping into vivid, internal monologues." --Barron's

"For all the griefs and regrets in [Intermezzo], all the misreadings and mistakes, as the characters try to figure out what they feel, we never lose sight of their capacity for love. If Rooney's work has a guiding belief, I think it's something such as this: no one is ever truly alone. Some might see that as obvious, a truism. Others would call it a reason to live." --The Telegraph

"Reading her piercing descriptions of passion, heartache, drunkenness or rage, you stop and wonder, how did she know that?" -The Economist

"Fascinating and delicate. . . . The sheer amount of human relationships and dynamics, like in all of her previous novels, gives a wide range of conversations and thoughtful dialogues. Readers will want to read it again and again to catch every sly nuance." --The Minnesota Star Tribune

"Stylistically daring, emotionally explosive, and endlessly wise, this is Rooney's best work yet." -Oprah Daily

"Rooney's no longer just the mouthpiece on twenty-something romantic angst. She's so much more." -Harper's Bazaar

"Messy yet poignant, [Intermezzo] has the same wonderful prose we all love and expect from Rooney. . . . Rooney's presence as an author is sharp and clear, like the presence of her characters, who take up space and fill the page to the brim with intellect and wit." --The Michigan Daily

"This is a writer pushing herself to test and explore both her characters and her art . This so-called 'voice of a generation' is in it for the long haul. As are we." -Marie Claire

"Kaleidoscopically beautiful and intimately human. . . . To read a Sally Rooney novel is to grip humanity in the palm of your hand, and Intermezzo is no different." --USA Today

"Mature and profound, Intermezzo feels like a culmination of everything she has done before. . . . A melancholic marvel; what is easily her best novel yet." --iNews

"[Rooney's] best yet. . . . Tender and true." --Good Housekeeping

"[Rooney's] most ambitious book yet, with a notable change in style. . . . Though [Intermezzo] circles Rooney's familiar themes--sex and romance, female illness, former whiz kids facing adult irrelevance--the work is deeper and more tender." --Air Mail