Courtesy of Asfi Tias

February 5, 2025

Unpacking ‘Intermezzo’: The Mysterious Book I Found

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Someone left this book outside my dorm building, so I decided to read it.

You read that right — some anonymous person, admirer or whomever left a random book just outside my dorm building in Baker Tower. Many would question why I would assume it was directed towards me. I have a very good reason to believe that: the book itself had my Aetna Insurance letters inside it. Of course that prompted a barrage of questions. How did this person get my letters from the House Office? Do they know my NetID? Why would they put it in a random book? Could this all have just been a strangely specific coincidence?

All this aside — I knew I couldn’t dwell on questions I couldn’t answer, so I decided to just go into the mysterious book left outside my door. The book is titled Intermezzo, written by Irish author Sally Rooney. I hadn’t realized it, but it was written about in The Sun before. Having never heard of her or the book before, I decided to give it a solid try. Upon opening it, I instantly forgot about the book’s mysterious appearance and was sucked into the world of Peter and Ivan. Peter and Ivan are two brothers grappling with the death of their father and juggling their personal relationships. The prose is interesting: It reads in a stream-of-consciousness way and flip-flops between the points of view of the characters. In fact, this book reminded me of a staple that I have written about before: Ulysses. The unique prose makes it hard to focus and contradictorily is what sucked me in. I was surprised to realize that this novel was so recent, being published in 2024. This is because it is so different from its other young adult or contemporary counterparts, from plotline to basic literary construction.

The book dives into complex characters, of course starting with Peter and Ivan, and then goes into the lives of the women they romance. Peter is a 32-year-old lawyer who is in a relationship with a 23-year-old college student, Naomi. The dynamic is so interesting because not only does it account for their massive age gap, but also the nature of the relationship. Naomi makes ends meet by selling explicit pictures online and taking money from Peter. However, there is still the lingering of a deeper connection between the two which goes beyond just a “casual” relationship. This all comes to a head when Peter faces his friend and ex-girlfriend Sylvia, who he still has lingering feelings for. This love triangle is incredibly juicy, creating a complicated dynamic between the three characters with Peter going back and forth between the two women. Sylvia is anything but two-dimensional and has such incredible agency in her relationship with Peter that it is refreshing.

For Naomi, we truly get to see the fruits and naivety of youth. Yet, at the same time, I could find myself relating to how Naomi feels on multiple occasions — whether that is feeling discarded, betrayed or ecstatic in her tumultuous relationship with Peter. This continues to Ivan, Peter’s younger brother who is a disheveled chess master who finds love in a much older woman named Margaret. Margaret is four years senior to Peter and Ivan is the same age as Naomi. When Peter finds out about this romance, he gets angry because of their age difference, failing to recognize the hypocrisy in his actions. The complex drama comes in waves, hitting high peaks and low troughs and constantly keeping the reader on the edge of their seat.

The style of the drama being conveyed as the relationships change makes you as the reader reflect on humanness and connection. Rooney does an excellent job of creating flawed characters, and she is not afraid to expose their vulnerabilities for all to consume. She “brilliantly covers the various kinds of love we encounter, and how loss, not just of loved ones, but the futures we thought we could have had changes us forever.” I could feel myself getting attached to all the characters and I ended up both loving and hating them at different points in time. This dynamic storytelling is what creates such a compelling piece, and the stream-of-consciousness style it is being told in makes it a delicious literary meal. 

So to whoever left the book outside my door, I commend you for your excellent taste in literature. However, it is a bit creepy. I would say, though, that getting introduced to Intermezzo and Sally Rooney’s expansive world kind of makes up for it.

Stay reading,
Asfi

Asfi Tias is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at [email protected].