Irish writer Sally Rooney’s first two novels, Normal People and Conversations With Friends, both hinged in part on holidays of great consequence taken by their protagonists to continental Europe. Away from Ireland, in the warming sun of Italy and the South of France respectively, our pale and morose heroes behave a little differently, take a few risks perhaps, argue and make love. Such is the potential effect of travel. Rooney has left behind the vacation plot for now, both in her third novel Beautiful World, Where are You? and in her lovely latest, Intermezzo. There’s no shortage of travel in Intermezzo, however, it’s all just of a more purposeful, domestic sort. Dublin-based brothers Peter and Ivan Koubek have just lost their father. The home in which the latter, a professional chess player in arrested development, lived with him sits empty in the suburbs, and their semi-estranged mother lives with her new family elsewhere. Ivan’s chess takes him to competitions in small cities and towns around Ireland—the first chapter from his perspective actually opens at one such event. In this new place, he meets and falls in love with an older woman, herself coping with her own sort of loss, and away from his ordinary life he is able to grow in tandem with this new connection. This novel is as sad as it is ambitious, not only for its 452-page-count (Rooney’s longest yet!) but also for its hard look at the incurability of grief and the feasibility of traditional romance. —Charlie Hobbs, associate editor
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