Join a book club that is reading Intermezzo: A Novel!

North of Cincy Women’s BookClub

Group of open-minded, free-thinking women in their 30s and 40s meeting in the northern Cincinnati suburbs.

Mindful Musings

A sanctuary for lovers of philosophy, poetry, classic literature, and more embracing thoughtful reads and reflective dialogue.

Sips And Stories SF

Sips and Stories is a cozy women’s only book club where we sip our favorite drinks and dive into lively discussions about great books. Join us!

Intermezzo: A Novel

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A National Indie Bestseller
Short-listed for the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year
Finalist for the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year

Named a Best Book of the Year and a Critics
Pick by The New York Times
Named an Essential Read by The New Yorker
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, Financial Times, Vogue, The Guardian, Harper’s
Bazaar, Vox, The Times (UK), Apple Books, and more
A USA Today, People, and Associated Press Top 10 Book of the Year

One of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2024

One of Chicago Public Librarys Favorite Books of the Year

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

BUY THE BOOK

Published Sep 24, 2024

464 pages

Average rating: 6.67

566 RATINGS

|

Community Reviews

Zoe E.
Aug 16, 2025
9/10 stars
8.5 rounded up. Found this one hard to get into at first, particularly the Peter chapters. I switched to audiobook and found that the disjointed sentence structure of those sections flowed much more readily when listened to. By the end I was very invested in these characters, who are all flawed but (unlike some of Rooney’s other characters) are all trying their best to muddle their way through life and maybe even to grow as people. I feel this is her most sympathetic book yet, both in that the characters are sympathetic and that she the author feels sympathy towards them.
sweetlemoneade
Jul 30, 2025
9/10 stars
I love this book, so sad, so sweet. It really captures the depth and complexity of grief. highly recommend.
jess.withbooks
Jun 05, 2025
8/10 stars
“Of course, he and his brother both wanted their lives to consist of winning all the time and never losing: this is presumably true of everyone. No one ever wants to lose. And yet for both Peter and Ivan, this particular feeling has perhaps been more important, more intense than for other people: the desire to win all the time, and also the naive youthful belief that it would be possible to live such a life, now soured by experience.”
lulutripp
Mar 16, 2025
8/10 stars
This took a while to get into, and while I am not sure I liked it as much as Rooney's Normal People, I did wind up really feeling for these two brothers. I give it 4 stars for characterization - how distinctive each brother and his inner monologuing is.
chistopher cesario
Jul 03, 2025
10/10 stars
I read this book in one week and I really enjoyed it

See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.