What is it that makes reading Sally Rooney’s novels such a cozy pleasure? To delve into those little intimate moments between individuals linked by a shared attraction, into their casual conversations – often over pillow talk – about life, love, desire, family?
The author of Conversations between friends and of Normal People sign with Intermezzo a fourth novel so eagerly awaited that its release is scheduled simultaneously in more than 40 countries, next week! And its readers will not be disappointed, since we find all the beauty of its beginnings, in its simplicity and candor.
In the greyness of the Dublin autumn, two brothers, Peter and Ivan, are mourning their father. The first is in his thirties, a lawyer. He hangs out with trendy and cultured young people, like him. His little venial sin is to hang out with a woman who is 10 years younger than him and who has already topped up her income by posing on a website. But he still has feelings for his childhood sweetheart, a university professor who ended their relationship a few years earlier and with whom he continues to maintain a close friendship.
With his younger brother, who is also 10 years younger, he maintains a contact that is at best cold and distant. Ivan, for his part, is a chess genius who, during a tournament in a small country town, falls in love with a woman older than him – the ideal pretext for addressing the prejudices and contradictions that persist on the question of age difference within a couple.
Between mourning and budding loves, sibling jealousies and family wounds, Sally Rooney describes these inner struggles that arise in the confusion of feelings. The complex relationships between brothers, the sensuality of first times, the heartbreaks of love, regrets, loss, the morals that we impose on ourselves and these facades that we erect around ourselves to make others believe that we lead “a good life”.
The young Irish author draws us with unparalleled discernment into these interludes that make up life, these “conditions” that make it bearable – or not. Like her, her characters have grown up and find themselves facing more “adult” questions, at the time of choices, while we insinuate ourselves into their intimacy – that of their deepest thoughts as well as that of their bedroom. And in the end, we cannot help but feel overwhelmed by a wave of sadness when the time comes to leave these people so normal that we could recognize ourselves in each of them.
In bookstores Tuesday
Intermezzo
Gallimard
460 pages