Cal Flyn interviewed at Five Books:
What are the novels everyone is talking about in Fall 2024?
Well, the most obvious answer to this question is Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo. Every Rooney book is a major publishing event, and this latest offering—which centres on the fraught relationship between two Irish brothers—has received rave reviews almost across the board. NPR called it “her most moving novel yet”; The Guardian said it was “perfect – truly wonderful – a tender, funny page-turner about the derangements of grief, and Rooney’s richest treatment yet of messy romantic entanglements.”
Intermezzo is set in Dublin, 2022, and unfolds over a period of around six months. Peter is a lawyer in his thirties; Ivan, his younger brother, is a chess player and data analyst in his twenties. Each has, as one might expect from a Rooney novel, a complicated love life. Peter’s unfolds as a triangle between himself, his former partner Sylvia, and a younger student, Naomi, who dabbles in sex work. Ivan falls for an older woman who fears the social repercussions of being seen together. “Is there a better novelist at work right now?” asked the Guardian reviewer, in exhausted admiration: “Rooney, author of four books in just seven years, has at this point already created more enduringly memorable characters than most novelists ever manage.”
Rooney fans may also be interested in her recent interview with The New York Times, a relatively rare opportunity to hear her discuss her work at length.
More here.
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