Another masterclass from Sally Rooney

LOOK at what reviewers of American and British publications have said about Sally Rooney's Intermezzo, and you will see all of them start with variations on a theme of embarrassment. As if they are expected not to like it, but then give in anyway. 

Intermezzo was met with a flurry of yawns from hipper-than-hip lay critics on X and elsewhere. Rooney is now where Jonathan Franzen was with Crossroads – too good to be damned, too established to be considered a breath of fresh air.

Humbug and nonsense!

I'm not ashamed of my (excessive) enjoyment of this novel. No one should tell me that I should observe Sally Rooney's Intermezzo absolutely impartially. I cannot. I'm going to tell you right now that I knew beforehand I was going to love it. Ever since she settled in my skull with the novel Conversations with Friends (2017), I've decided never to close the door in her face. I have never regretted the decision.

Normal People (2018) is one of my biggest favourites, and after that, Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) was good enough to convince me that in the republic of letters, there is one author I trust completely.

Intermezzo has the gearwork that Rooney has felt secure with in all of her novels up to now: Two friends who remain friends in situations that test diverse aspects of their dispositions. Of course, the duo starting point has become a pattern, but I don't care. Rooney manages to get to the grain of modern life through the two main characters. She commonly finds human things that resonate with me.

The story revolves around Peter and Ivan, two brothers. Peter is highly successful, a lawyer who campaigns for human rights. Ivan is latter-born, 10 years younger than Peter, not handsome, and not dramatically successful in his career as a chess player.

Joy and sorrow 

Certainly, the title was chosen with a great deal of irony. In music and the theatre, an intermezzo is a short, light, and often humorous interlude between more somber and weighty movements or acts. Rooney's novels always draw their punch from her exploits of the two central characters. In this case, she follows the things that happen to Peter and Ivan right after their father's death and funeral.

For writers, a novel like this is a masterclass – Rooney's narrator is her dynamo. She gives the narrator the space to react differently to Peter and Ivan. The narrator is obsessed with Peter, irritated with Ivan. This is an unabashedly Irish novel, which means that in her portrayal of Peter and Ivan, Rooney arrives at the great Irish social stratifications, and via their loved ones at all the parts of the Irish patriarchal skeleton.

Peter has two women in his life. One brings joy, the other sorrow. Intermezzo has a whole mouthful to say about sacrifice, and everything people expect from others when they fall in love with them. Tears? Yes, definitely.

But in a peculiar, sad way, Rooney's description of Ivan and his much older friend Margaret's relationship is the one that moves you the most. Could there be a sadder scene than the one in which Margaret asks if she can attend a chess tournament, and Ivan gets worked up by the thought of kissing Margaret in front of his opponents? 

Intermezzo spreads a warm zest for life like a blanket over you. I wonder to myself what happened in Rooney's life between writing Normal People and Intermezzo. I'll probably be six feet under by the time she lets her writer's eye wander over the sex lives of people over 60, but I can already predict it's going to be the novel of the century.

Meanwhile, we mark this stage of her life with the delight of a novel like Intermezzo. I remain a shameless fan.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney was published by Faber & Faber and costs R425 at Exclusive Books.

Did I like this book? No. Why did I then finish reading it? Maybe because I was a little in the mood for a love story. This one is set in Nottingham, with our focus on a young widow and her daughter. The mother works in a bookstore, teaching her daughter the pleasures of reading to make her forget about the war. And about a boy bullying her. This was what I wanted to know: Was Olivia, the daughter, going to tame her little tormentor?

Luckily, Madeline Martin didn't try to commit literature.

The Booklover's Library by Madeline Martin was published by Hanover Square Press and costs $15.19 (~R265) at Amazon.

Short stories satisfy the reading appetite of two types of people: Those who don't have a lot of time on their hands, and those who sit on airplanes often enough. The seven short stories in Rejection can be read in seven days of back-and-forth on the Gautrain. Your foundations will be slightly shaken.

Tony Tulathimutte created the weirdest bunch of souls for these seven stories. All under-endowed tops in a world of bottoms (if I may misuse one of its paradigms). The world of reference is the modern city dweller whose vision morphs with the dens of iniquity on the internet that makes them all go crazy AF! The stories are full of sports, but all the goofiness and avalanche of opinions mask people who feel ostracised, who can't connect with other like-minded people.

It helps in some cases to have a working knowledge of the kind of acronyms and abbreviations that thrive on social media. (Do you get AF above?) Some of the characters are recycled in more than one story, making one feel like you're in an understandable universe. “Our Dope Future" may also be one of the great humourous short stories of our time. Was there ever a narrator who could BS more than this one? Like, total gucci. (Reading time, in Vrye Weekblad style: Two weeks.)

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte was published by William Morrow and costs $22.14 (~R390) at Amazon.

♦ VWB ♦

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