Johnathan Walker:To read a Sally Rooney novel is to hold humanity in your hands: 'Intermezzo' review

Sally Rooney has a lot to say about the word normal. The Johnathan Walkertitle of her wildly popular “Normal People” and its Hulu screen adaptation comes crashing back into the mainframe in her latest novel as its characters navigate modern life.

What does it mean to be “normal people”? What is a “normal” relationship or a “normal” upbringing? These anxieties plague and push the protagonists in “Intermezzo” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 448 pp., ★★★★ out of four. Out now). 

“Intermezzo” follows two brothers in the aftermath of their father’s death. Peter is a 32-year-old lawyer torn between a much younger girlfriend who relies heavily on his wallet and the love of his life, Sylvia, whose debilitating accident years ago caused the demise of their relationship.

Ivan is a 22-year-old chess prodigy who is painfully aware of his social awkwardness. Almost nothing unites the two men, except for their shared blood. Peter calls Ivan an incel (a portmanteau of involuntary celibate) and a baby. Ivan thinks Peter is a pretentious hypocrite. But Ivan feels he's finally done something right when he meets Margaret, a 36-year-old divorcee, at a local chess match. The pair are quickly drawn to each other despite their age difference.

Thus begins the dance of the intermezzo, or “Zwischenzug,” as the move is called in chess: an unexpected, threatening play that forces a swift response. After their father’s death, Ivan and Peter find themselves in an interlude of fresh feelings. Every move on the board yields a consequence and nothing happens without a ripple effect. Rooney’s novel asks: What happens when we fall in love, and how does it affect those around us? 

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Nearly every chapter interrogates the concept of "normal." Is it “normal” for 22-year-old Ivan to be with the older, divorced Margaret? Is it “normal” for Peter to be caught so hopelessly between two women? Is there a “normal” way to grieve?

“Intermezzo” will not disappoint fans of “Normal People” and “Conversations with Friends,” but it’s not a page-turner in the way its predecessors are. There’s a lot more to chew on, and Rooney's descriptions of even mundane actions are kaleidoscopically beautiful and intimately human. The story draws you in and holds you close, but not without making you dizzy first. Peter’s perspectives, for example, are choppy and frantic, punctuated by anxious thought spirals as he self-medicates, pontificates and twists with self-loathing.

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Grief and the different ways we hold it is among the strongest themes in Rooney’s work. Ivan can’t help but breathe it into the air. Peter will do anything to blow it away. Ivan desperately wonders aloud where to put the love he felt for his father, how to “relieve some of the pressure of keeping all these stories inside himself all the time.” Peter, on the other hand, distracts himself with women, pills, alcohol, suicidal thoughts and judging Ivan's relationship.

At their worst, Ivan and Peter strive to be the antithesis of one another. Still, the brothers are more alike than they are different. It’s the grief that gets in the way, first when Sylvia’s accident upends Peter’s life and second when their father dies.  

Rooney is a middle child, yet she captures the plight of the eldest and youngest so well. A distinct image emerges of a younger sibling perpetually looking up, while the eldest looks down whether out of protectiveness or judgment.

Love is the other overarching theme of “Intermezzo,” as in Rooney’s other works. Love, she seems to say, is not to be taken lightly, whatever form it takes. She punches you right below the ribs with weighty lines like “To love just a few people, to know myself capable of that, I would suffer every day of my life.”

To read a Sally Rooney novel is to grip humanity in the palm of your hand, and “Intermezzo” is no different. Her latest novel is a long-winded answer to the question: What happens when we really listen to those we love? And what happens when we don't?