Sara Schmidt Contributor

The delight of reading any of Sally Rooney’s novels lies in the natural affinity one develops toward her characters. Rooney possesses an exceptional talent for crafting intricate and relatable characters, ones where you feel you are looking at yourself. Reading any of Rooney’s novels is like a sigh of relief; her characters capture not only the subtleties but the crudest elements of having to live alongside others, precisely because social relationships ground our existence. Ultimately, Rooney’s writing style is anything but delicate. Rooney writes in such a personalistic manner that the reader is almost overwhelmed by the intensity with which they are absorbed in her character’s inner workings. This profound overture between reader and character grounds the experience of reading Rooney’s novels and touches on how one can form such intense attachments to her characters; attachments where you catch yourself slipping into how her characters’ apprehend the world; attachments where you wish you could sit down with her characters’ over a drink; attachments where you want to tenderly exclaim “You are not alone because I understand you!”

Although I recommend all of Rooney’s novels, apart from Conversation with Friends, which I struggled to form a deep attachment to the novel’s characters, her most recent publication Intermezzo is her most mature work yet. Centering on the relationship between two brothers, Ivan and Peter, who are grieving the loss of their father, Intermezzo is a slow-moving, internal-dialogue-driven novel. Briefly put, Ivan is a 22-year-old chess player who decodes the world analytically while stumbling through relationships with an almost charming social awkwardness. Peter is a successful 32-year-old barrister who seems to be driving himself into misery by constantly reckoning with events of the past in his present, without much hope that the future will be better.

Zeroing in on Peter, his internal dialogue is very much influenced by Shakespeare’s epic dramas Hamlet and Macbeth, making him a standout character to the reader, or specifically, any person who has suffered a similar experience of driving oneself mad from overintellectualizing one’s sorrows while blissfully aware of the insignificance of it all. For Peter, the quintessential soliloquy from Hamlet, “To be, or not to be, that is the question,” and from Macbeth, “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” are on steroids. It becomes a basic fact that Peter is under neurosis; overwhelmed by the grief of his father’s passing, the guilt that he did not make more of an effort with him, the jealousy of his brother’s closeness with their father, the distress that the good days are gone, the torment of caring for two different women, the list goes on. Overall, it is Peter’s neurotic spell that grounds my fondness for him. Although you feel yourself being driven mad by his madness and although all you want to tell him is “relax, everything is ok,” the best you can do is go along with him and stick by his side. An overpowering loyalty and devotion to a fictional character may be absurd, but therein lies the beauty of Rooney’s writing.