A Cold Cup of Rooney
Can the final chapter save a whole novel and are fans aware Rooney is a self-proclaimed Marxist?
Whiffs of freshly brewed coffee linger in the air, curling through the pages of a well-loved book. Soft chatter hums in the background, blending with the quiet clink of mugs on wooden tables.
Welcome back to Arete & Ink, where the stories are warm, the coffee is strong, and we’ve got another bookish brew on the menu.
On today’s brew bar— The Rooney Realism, a chicory café au lait with burnt sugar drizzle; Naomi’s Daydream, our rosewater mocha with white chocolate & crushed pistachios, and Peter’s Pretense, an espresso tonic with a slice of dried orange.
Since this is a book club meeting to discuss what we’re currently reading, there will be spoilers.
Before setting off on our strenuous, sea-tossed voyage of critique, I’ll be candid: this book ended up on my DNF shelf. I reached page 232 and groaned, “Halfway still to go? I can’t stand this anymore.” I genuinely wanted to like it, to be drawn into its world and characters. They say not to judge a book by its cover—and that’s generally wise advice—but have you seen the cover of Intermezzo? It’s beautifully designed. Add to that Sally Rooney’s massive presence across Bookstagram, BookTube, BookTok, and Pinterest, and she seemed a worthy author to explore.
Rooney, author of Normal People, Conversations with Friends, and the short story Mr Salary, has received widespread acclaim and numerous awards. Her books have sold millions of copies and she has been celebrated for capturing the voice of a generation. According to The Irish Times:
Sally Rooney’s Normal People has now sold more than one million copies in the UK alone, while Conversations with Friends and Beautiful World, Where Are You have each sold over 500,000 copies. She has received the Costa Novel of the Year, the Encore Award, and co-wrote the acclaimed TV adaptation of Normal People.
Rooney’s cultural imprint is undeniable—and yet, as I read Intermezzo, I couldn’t help but feel an ache at how far the narrative seemed to drift from anything resembling lasting meaning or genuine connection.
A brief summary
Peter and Ivan Koubek are brothers—though there’s not much else holding them together apart from their surname. Their father’s recent death prompts a slow, stumbling emotional unraveling as both men attempt to live with, or at least beside, their grief. Ivan, twenty-two, is a chess player whose talent seems to be slipping; Peter, older and a successful lawyer, navigates fraught relationships and a gnawing internal emptiness. The brothers are estranged, and most of the book centers on their individual relationships with three women: Sylvia, Naomi, and Margaret.
Ivan is dating Margaret, who is over a decade his senior. Peter is involved with both Naomi, a much younger college student who sometimes acts as an escort, and Sylvia, his long-time ex-girlfriend who remains a significant—though deeply complicated—presence in his life. Sylvia suffers chronic pain from an accident and can no longer be intimate in the way Peter desires, which contributes to their relational breakdown.
Someone’s reading near the fire—an old Penguin paperback with curling pages. You hear a pencil scratch in a margin. A low jazz tune hums from the speakers, something a little sad but strangely warm.
Rooney’s prose style is sparse, cool, emotionally restrained. Did this tone help you focus on what’s left unsaid—or did it leave you wanting more? Where is the line between subtlety and detachment in storytelling?
Losing love in literature
She feels a hot unpleasant tingling in her nose and throat. Maybe for my own vanity, she says. To make me feel good about myself.
One more he looks over at her, as she indicates to turn left off the main road. What does that means? he asks. You don't care about me, but you're flattered I like you? She completes the turn, switches off the indicator, and drives more slowly now along the smaller winding road to the cottage. Of course I care about you, she says. But yes, to speak truthfully, I am flattered that you like me.
And what's wrong with that? he asks. It's not like I'm so innocent, I have no ego. Obviously it's nice for my self-esteem if you think I'm attractive, or whatever. If you do. Why should that be bad?
This exchange, for me, captured much of what felt missing in Intermezzo: love. Or rather, its absence. Over the course of 448 pages—almost five hundred—there wasn’t a single moment that stirred my heart toward these characters. I felt no rising affection for them, no growing attachment. And more importantly, I never once saw them truly, tenderly love one another.
When we think of beloved characters—Elizabeth Bennet, Harry Potter, the Karamazov brothers—they are often wrapped in a symphony of emotions. We grow to know them. We see them love, suffer, strive, and hope. In Intermezzo, the emotional notes are muted, flattened. A kind of moral monotone hums beneath the surface of every interaction.
Take the excerpt above. On first glance, it might seem vulnerable—even honest. But read more closely, and you’ll see a hollow ring in the dialogue. Margaret is attempting to justify something, but not the right thing. She speaks of Ivan’s potential regret over her age, but never acknowledges the deeper problem: the self-serving motivations behind their connection. The issue isn’t age—it’s the lack of regard. Of care. Of truthfulness.
Peter’s relationships fare no better. His supposed affection for both Sylvia and Naomi feels entirely without weight. He sleeps with Naomi, a young college student who clearly depends on him far more than she ought to, and he offers her no genuine protection, no lasting care. There is no evidence that he sees her—truly sees her—as a whole person.
Now, I don’t mean to lay all the blame at Peter’s feet. Naomi, after all, is a grown woman and must be responsible for her choices. But responsibility doesn’t negate imbalance. Their dynamic is murky, and Peter moves through it without reflection. Sylvia, his longtime ex-girlfriend and now “best friend,” suffers from chronic pain and can no longer fulfill what Peter deems a “real relationship” due to her inability to have sex. And so, they drift—hovering somewhere between intimacy and alienation—until Sylvia wisely draws the line, leaving Peter to seethe.
His response? To return again to Naomi, a source of comfort when his other relationships crumble. It’s less about love and more about retreat. And it makes me wonder: do either of these women see themselves as deserving of more? They seem to accept Peter’s fragmented attention, even as they know the role they’re playing in his story.
And Peter—does he ever stop to ask if he is using others to mask his own inability to form meaningful bonds?
If this novel weren’t so tangled and bleak in its portrayal of relationships, I might almost suggest reading it simply so you could see for yourself just how deeply love is not present in these pages.
Look, I hope you know I’m grateful, she says. That you’re letting me stay here, I mean. And everything else as well, cooking for me, helping me out with things. It means a lot to me, how decent you’re being. In my life, to be honest, people don’t do things like that for me. You know, in my childhood. I didn’t grow up in that kind of situation. And with relationships, I won’t even go into all that, but let’s just say it has not worked out that way. You’re going to think that I’m reading too much into it now, and I’m not. It’s not like I think, oh Peter must be really serious about me, he’s in love with me, or whatever. I’m not stupid. But I just want to say I appreciate how decent you’ve been.
This is heartbreaking, in a quiet way. And perhaps that’s the point. But is Peter decent? Or is our definition of decency, of relational goodness, just... slipping?
Are we so lonely that we take crumbs and call them cake? Are women really meant to be grateful for this kind of attention? And are men truly this unaware—or unwilling—to examine the emotional consequences of their actions?
Though I won’t delve too deeply into Ivan and Margaret’s relationship or Peter’s entanglements with Sylvia and Naomi, I will say this: there is a shared thread running through all these so-called romances. They are hollow, transactional, and self-serving. Not just in the physical sense, but in the most intimate emotional ways. The characters seek connection only as a means to soothe themselves. They are not willing to endure the mess of true, sacrificial love. They choose ease over effort. Escape over engagement.
It’s as though these characters have been programmed to avoid depth. They sense pain and look away. They approach intimacy with a kind of sterile detachment. Sex becomes not communion, but coping. Vulnerability becomes a script, not a surrender.
And yet, brokenness in relationships is real. I’m not denying that. Families fracture. Love can fail. But even in stories about heartbreak, there is usually a glimmer of healing. Of redemption. Of choice.
Rooney withholds that, particularly in the dynamic between Peter and Ivan. The two brothers never reach across the chasm. They don’t take responsibility, or offer forgiveness. There is no reconciliation. No effort to heal. Just silence.
Some would call this realism. I suppose it is.
But realism without hope? Realism without love? That isn’t human. That’s hollow.
Transactional intimacy and emotional drift
The novel’s romantic entanglements are not the only expressions of relational dysfunction. Peter and Ivan’s broken sibling bond is never fully reconciled. They don’t take responsibility for their estrangement, and Rooney, in keeping with her minimalist style, doesn’t guide them—or us—toward healing. Many contemporary readers might describe this as realism. But it also felt like a missed opportunity. Literature is uniquely positioned to show us not only the fractured state of things, but also the luminous possibility of restoration. That possibility, here, never comes.
Admirability and heroism—do they matter anymore?
Other feelings he notices also as they wait together in the dim warmth of the restaurant for the man the bring their coats. Had believed once that life must lead to something, all the unresolved conflicts and questions leading on towards some great culmination. Curiously underexamined beliefs like that, underpinning his life, his personality. Irrational attachment to meaning. All very well as far as it goes, the question of constitutionality arises, and so on. Couldn’t go to work in the morning if he didn’t something meant something else. But what is it all leading up to. An end without an ending.
What stood out most to me was not only the lack of heroic or admirable figures—but the way their absence left a hollow echo through the pages. These were not characters who stumbled and then sought redemption; rather, their gross indecency was left largely unexamined, quietly normalized, even expected. Their choices—and their disinterest in seeking something higher or more meaningful—seemed to suggest a quiet refusal to grow up and face the music.
Of course, we are all flawed, all human. We fall short. But what unsettled me in Intermezzo was the way Rooney never really calls Peter or Ivan’s choices poor. Instead, she cushions them beneath a blanket of “grieving people who need time.” As if time, unaccompanied by repentance, is what makes us whole again.
If I were to look up to these characters—if I were to hold them up as a mirror for myself—I would grieve, not grow. I would ache over the state of my moral apathy.
I grew up immersed in epic worlds, fantastical kingdoms, stories where even talking animals knew the difference between good and evil. Where families sacrificed, friends stood loyal, and characters longed for nobility, beauty, goodness. These values were the atmosphere of the stories I loved—they saturated them like sunlight through stained glass.
So Intermezzo shocked me. Genuinely. I was surprised that such stories—stories so steeped in emotional detachment, moral drift, and quiet despair—were not only being written, but being widely loved.
Can a story still be excellent without admirable characters? I don’t believe it can—not truly. Because what are characters, if not reflections of us? They exist because we exist. And though they may inhabit brokenness, they should also carry the weight of possibility: the ache of hope, the quiet dignity of sacrifice, the fragile pull toward the good.
Authors can, and should, explore darkness. But great stories draw that darkness into the light. They expose it. They make us feel it. And then, they quietly whisper that even the most twisted places in the human heart are not beyond redemption.
Some readers may find my response too rigid, too structured—as if I’m trying to fit literary fiction into a formula it was never meant to follow. Perhaps. But what I hope to do instead is honor the stories—and characters—that shape us for the better.
Characters who are worth emulating. Or perhaps worth weeping for—not because they failed to be perfect, but because they could have been so much more. Or because, against all odds, they remain tender, pure-hearted, and brave in a world that threatens to make them otherwise.
Who weeps for Peter’s hollow affections toward Sylvia or Naomi, when he so clearly uses both women for his own ends? There is no ache, no remorse, no reaching for something more. And yet, who among us can read of little Pip or Joe Gargery in Great Expectations and not feel a welling ache for their pain? Who can ignore the strength of Francie Nolan as she navigates poverty and loneliness in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
These characters invite tears, gasps, fury. They remind us of what is human in the most stirring sense: flawed, yes, but also luminous.
There are countless other critiques that could be made of Intermezzo—the flat emotional arc, the aimlessness, the absence of characters willing to wrestle with their darker selves. Not villains, exactly. Just... everyday people who’ve stopped trying.
And that, perhaps, is what unsettled me most of all.
Next to the barista stand is a little chalkboard where people write bookish thoughts or share recommendations. Someone has scribbled: “We need more characters who hope.” Another: “Tolstoy > Rooney, discuss.” The barista grins and adds, “Be kind, folks.”
Today’s literature often leans into existential drift, moral ambiguity, and emotional ambivalence. Do we still crave stories with heroes? What role does admirability—or at least transformation—play in keeping us invested in a character’s journey?
But a small light at the end?
To be fair, I had initially based my conclusion on a summary of the book’s ending, but that didn’t sit right with me. So I returned to Intermezzo and read the final chapter myself. I’m glad I did.
Chapter seventeen moved me—not to tears, and not enough to salvage the whole reading experience, but enough to see Rooney’s characters open up in a way they hadn’t before. There was an honesty there, a glimpse of potential reconciliation. That mattered. It didn’t erase the downward spiral of the preceding chapters, but it did hint that perhaps not all was lost.
Still, in my view, forty pages of redemptive possibility don’t quite make up for four hundred pages of emotional vacancy. Grace is important—but so is growth. And growth was what Intermezzo lacked.
Your mug is nearly empty. Outside, the storm has passed. A beam of sunlight catches the rim of the window, and across from you, someone silently opens a book to begin again.
The last chapter of Intermezzo offers a faint glimmer of warmth—subtle, quiet, perhaps too late. How important is a novel’s ending in shaping your overall impression?
Can a good ending redeem a difficult read—or does the journey weigh heavier than the destination?
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