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Intermezzo

By: Sally Rooney
Narrated by: Éanna Hardwicke
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Publisher's summary

"Eanna Hardwicke's narration highlights the rich emotionality of Rooney's newest novel. Hardwicke's smooth voice shifts to capture every mood—becoming desperately angry, bitter, and frantic yet also achingly tender, patient, and loving—as he performs a story of two grieving brothers."AudioFile (Earphones Award Winner)

This program is read by actor Éanna Hardwicke, known for his role in Hulu's Normal People.

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2024 Sally Rooney (P)2024 Macmillan Audio
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Critic reviews

“Bestseller Rooney returns with a boldly experimental and emotionally devastating story of estrangement . . . The novel’s deliberate pacing veers from the propulsiveness of Normal People and the deep character work contrasts with the topicality of Beautiful World, but in many ways this feels like Rooney’s most fully realized work, especially as she channels the modernist styles of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf . . . Even the author’s skeptics are liable to be swept away by this novel’s forceful currents of feeling.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves . . . The characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real . . . Her grandmaster status remains intact.”
Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Review

Sally Rooney raises her game
We may not be getting bucket hats this time, but a new Sally Rooney novel is still an EVENT. And Intermezzo is much more than a must-have accessory, though you’ll see it everywhere this fall. If you’ve been pining for Sally’s liquid sentences and diamond insights, here they are, this time in a tale of two brothers: Peter, a dashing early-thirtysomething who “goes along the surface of life very smoothly” according to Ivan, younger by a decade, a neurodiverse chess prodigy a bit past his prime—both of them navigating romances while facing the recent death of their father. I’m inhaling the vivid scenes and blasé bombshells—“Plain, unappealing people are by no means exempt from the experience of strong passions,” muses Ivan, for one. This is also a first-time departure from Rooney’s signature narrator Aoife McMahon. I will always love Aoife, but man, Éanna Hardwicke, who you know as Rob from TV’s Normal People, is the perfect voice for this novel: intelligent, charismatic, and (yes!) demurely sexy as only Irish men know how. Well played, all around.— Kat J., Audible Editor

What listeners say about Intermezzo

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Beautifully Written & Narrated

As a participant in a short story group, we read an excerpt of Intermezzo that was recently published in The New Yorker. While I had never read any of Sally Rooney’s books, after reading the short story of when Ivan meets Margaret, I immediately downloaded the book. The story is so beautifully constructed and the characters are brilliantly brought to life, that upon finishing the book, I began looking forward to what I imagined would be the next chapter or this compelling novel.

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Obsessed with this

Just such an amazing book amazing characters and storyline. And a great narration. Love love love

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I loved the different characters in the book!

I enjoyed listening this novel about life, grief, love, and relationships among siblings. It’s very well written as well!

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My favorite of Rooney’s books

I loved the intimacy with which the love affair between Ivan and Margaret is drawn. From the first moments it feels as if it’s a relationship between intellectual and sensual equals.

No one writes female sexuality better than Sally Rooney.

I was less well persuaded by Peter and his entanglements, in the both women seem slightly implausible but the raging anger and resentment the two brothers share feels entirely true.

I love her command of physical detail, rainy streets, silent car rides, and— my god— the crisp brilliance of her dialogue

I love this book

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The best

The world needs more sally Rooneys . My god does she understand the human condition
I’ll wait for the mini series

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Compelling

Dialogue and scene making…both excellent. Rooney plunges into the thoughts of two brothers in this novel. A new approach for her. A bit sappy at the end but she earned it.

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Beyond Excellent!

The way Sally writes is so refreshing, endearing, and capturing of all that is so deeply human. The narrator adds to this poetic style with perfect tone and inflection. I grew to love all of these beautiful characters like they are dear friends and knowing them has helped me love my own family more and accept the differences that threaten to pull us apart. I want to listen over and over and I plan to! A+ to author and story and performance!

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So Satisfying

It's been far too long since I've fully lost myself in a great novel. This work is so rich and absorbing, filled with psychologically complex and beautifully crafted characters. I was disappointed it had to ultimately come to an end. My favorite of Rooney's novels (so far).

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Loved It!

I know I’m going to get something amazing when I see a new release from Sally Rooney. Her writing is exquisite, absolutely flawless. I was captivated by the story, so complex, but really very basic - grief and love.

Narration was excellent especially for depicting depressed moods and the genuineness of love !!

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Brothers and Friends

I really enjoyed this. Even tho the minutiae is very deep initially there is some about Sally Rooney's writing that keeps me interested. 2 brothers greiving their father's death try and figure out how they go on and who they are.

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