Souvik

My Rating: 1.5 / 5 stars

Introduction & Expectations

I approached Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo with high hopes, in part because of the buzz surrounding its release and my previous admiration for her lyricism. Rooney’s reputation for capturing emotional nuance and inner life drew me in—yet, by the end, I found myself underwhelmed. I expected a richly textured exploration of interpersonal dynamics; instead, the narrative felt compressed, and I struggled to connect with both the prose and the characters’ internal experiences.

Narrative Style & Prose

From the opening chapter, the sentences in Intermezzo struck me as unusually dense. Rooney’s writing is famously pared-down, but here it verges on feeling like “compressed versions of sentences,” as though every layer of context has been stripped away. Where I once delighted in savoring each turn of phrase, I now found myself hunting for emotional grounding. Instead of allowing me to inhabit the characters’ minds, the prose often jumps ahead before I can fully imagine their internal landscapes. In contrast, my first ever foray into literary fiction with Tagore at age eleven—offered moments where I could visualise a scene so vividly that it stayed with me. Intermezzo rarely granted that luxury.

Characterization & Empathy

Rooney’s protagonists often skewer the intricacies of modern relationships, and here she leans heavily on physical intimacy as the principal language between characters. While sex can be a portal to vulnerability and connection, in Intermezzo it sometimes felt like a veneer—an expectation that intimacy alone would suffice for emotional depth. I was left wishing for more contextual “scenes” that made me truly feel what the characters were experiencing, rather than simply reading about their encounters. When a narrative can’t fully convey its characters’ thoughts or emotional stakes, it becomes difficult to empathize or root for them.

Themes & Comparisons

Thematically, Rooney attempts to juggle ideas about desire, disillusionment, and the search for meaning. There are moments when I saw faint parallels to Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, in terms of characters striving to escape circumstances—but even that comparison underscored Rooney’s minimalist restraint. Ghosh’s sweeping generosity of detail allows readers to inhabit a world, whereas Intermezzo often skimmed over the “why” behind its characters’ decisions. In fairness, Rooney never intended to write an epic saga, but I found myself craving the very complexity and nuance she seems to have sacrificed. The central theme—perhaps a critique of how easily people chase novelty (in sex, substance, or escape)—felt diluted rather than incisive. I finished the book thinking: “If 90 percent of people read this for its themes on sex or modern malaise, is that enough? I’m not convinced.”

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, Intermezzo fell short of the expectations I brought into it. While I admired Rooney’s ambition to strip away excess and present characters in their barest form, the result was a narrative that often felt stunted. The lack of lyrical immersion—those small scenes that transport you into a character’s mind—left me disconnected. I recognize that minimalist fiction isn’t for everyone, and that many readers will find beauty in Rooney’s unadorned approach. For me, however, Intermezzo missed the emotional resonance I value in literary fiction. If you’re hoping for sweeping empathy or the kind of vivid character-study found in a novel like Sea of Poppies, you may want to temper your expectations.