SALLY ROONEY AND MILLENNIAL FICTION

Earlier in January, I finally got my hands on Sally Rooney’s new book, Intermezzo. Two months late to its release and eagerly awaiting to dig my claws into the thick, four-hundred-page book that it was—I realized that this was my first ever Sally Rooney book I had ever actually read. I had watched Normal People on Hulu and it encapsulated me because of Paul Mescal’s haunting performance, as well as the bigger question it poses of soul ties that young people carry with them throughout their life. The show inspired me to start reading her work, especially since I’m an avid reader of literary fiction. I thought it was about time I had sunk into one of her books and finally get to see for myself what the hype was all about.

Intermezzo appealed to me because it is a book about grief and two siblings who are struggling to cope with it, both separately and on their own terms. Rooney explores the unfortunate and troubling subject of grief and the effect it has on family, especially distant, strained family, with the out-of-character actions and situations she puts her characters in. For example, Intermezzo shifts perspectives between Peter, Ivan, and Margeret—Ivan’s older girlfriend. Peter’s dialect and diction in his chapters often follow the same pattern of abruptly ended sentences, lack of explanation, and jumbled thought. Which we, the reader, can infer that either that is simply how Peter functions, or there’s something deeper happening within his mental health and potentially his drug addiction that leads him down an incoherent and adulterous path, unable to choose between two women whom he loves. 

Peter and Margeret’s perspectives are intertwined in the same chapter, a metaphor for how alike the two are and the closeness they begin to unravel between themselves as their relationship progresses. While some believe Intermezzo is too long, too chalk-full of narrative that amounts to “nothing”, I beg to disagree. For me, the varying perspectives, through their vast complexity, only adds to the bigger questions of people’s behavior and attitude towards family bonds in pursuit of navigational grief. 

While many critics debate Intermezzo, they paint Rooney as a victim to “millennial malaise” and critique her for her spare dialogue and such. I believe Rooney perfectly encapsulates the struggle between intertwined relationships and internal struggle. Her characters symbolize every hard struggle within the “real” world adults constantly warn you about, and I’d rather take advice from a literary millennial than a critic unfamiliar with human fault. 

CITATIONS: 

Sally Rooney In All Her Contradictions: The Politics of Literary Intimacy – OHS Observer