Sally Rooney's eagerly awaited fourth novel Intermezzo has been published this morning.
The 33-year-old writer from Co Mayo has been a critical and commercial success since her first novel, Conversations with Friends, was published back in 2017.
While that was successful, it was the smash hit TV drama series of her second novel, Normal People, that brought her to a global audience, also unleashing Paul Mescal and his O’Neills shorts on to the international stage.
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Sally Rooney’s third novel Beautiful World, Where Are You shot to the top of the UK’s book charts when it was published in 2021.
To date, she has sold more than 3 million copies of her books in the UK and Ireland alone, and they have been translated into 40 languages.
Time magazine named her among the top 100 most influential people in global culture.
This fourth novel, Intermezzo, is being celebrated already with Rooney’s publishers Faber and Faber describing the launch as "the biggest trade campaign ever".
Across Ireland and the UK, bookshops opened their doors early at 8am with numerous launch events taking place for eager fans.
The book tells the story of two brothers, 32-year-old lawyer Peter and the socially awkward chess champion Ivan, who we meet as they are navigating their way through the grief of losing their father.
They are both caught up in complicated relationships, with Peter involved in a triangular connection with Naomi, 10 years his junior, and his colleague Sylvia.
In Ivan’s case he falls for an older woman, Margaret, and with this cast of characters and complex personal lives, Rooney traces their story.
The title of the book itself, Intermezzo, is a musical term referring to a piece of music, either a short piece for a solo instrument or a piece of music inserted between major acts.
It is also a chess term, described as an ‘in between move’.
In a public interview with the Irish Times’ Fintan O’Toole on Saturday night in the National Concert Hall, one of the few public events that Rooney is participating in for the launch of this novel, she said that the story was first inspired by a scene she imagined, where a chess player is playing a series of concurrent games against a group of opponents, moving around from one board to another in a rural community centre, and she built the story from there.
But is the early buzz around Intermezzo merited?
The early reviews are in, and they include some very impressive comments, including Anthony Cummins from The Guardian who wrote that "Intermezzo is perfect - truly wonderful," adding "is there a better novelist at work right now?"
In The Irish Times, Michael Cronin wrote "this bold, adventurous and captivating novel is a major addition to a body of work that never fails to surprise and engage."
The Independent gave it five stars while The Sunday Times said "it was the author’s most mature and moving book to date."
The New York Times has chimed in too describing the book as "this exhilarating new novel".
Meanwhile, the i’s Anna Bonet described Intermezzo as "mature and profound" but also noted that one of the main female characters, Naomi, is not as well fleshed out as the other characters.
Shahidha Bari, writing in the Financial Times, pointed out this too, saying "The saintly Sylvia feels cast in the mould of a recognisably Rooney-esque heroine, and the blithe Naomi, complete with nose stud and a risqué social media account, teeters a little too closely to a Gen Z variation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl."
But Bari added that there is "something more impressionistic" about the writing compared with Rooney's usually "spare style".
For the fans who lined up early outside Dublin’s Hodges Figgis and across shops in Ireland and the UK, it is clear for them that Intermezzo is already hitting all the right notes for them this morning.
