Intermezzo cover art

Intermezzo

Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

$8.99/mo after trial ends. Cancel anytime
Try for $0.00
More purchase options

Intermezzo

By: Sally Rooney
Narrated by: Éanna Hardwicke
Try for $0.00

Auto-renews at {membershipPrice}/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $31.53

Buy Now for $31.53

Summary

THE GLOBAL NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD

'I read it in a state of rapture.' SUNDAY TIMES
'A tender, funny page-turner.' OBSERVER
'Come for the romance, stay for the meaning of life.' IRISH TIMES
'A breathtakingly intimate look at love and desire in its many different forms.' RED

From the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Normal People, an exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family.

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.

Sally Rooney's book Intermezzo was a bestseller w/c 30/09/2024

©2024 Sally Rooney (P)2024 Faber & Faber
Best of 2024 Editors Select Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Inspiring Heartfelt Thought-Provoking Grief
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c

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

All stars
Most relevant
It took me a while to start caring about the main characters, but I am so glad I stuck with it. I would definitely say this is as engaging as Conversations With Friends. I didn't want it to end. The characters are beautiful and flawed and I could relate to their inner thoughts about life. A great read!

beautiful characters and narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Amazing story. Some weird audio parts that I can only assume were re recordings but otherwise, perfection.

Absolutely beautiful and touching story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I loved the emotional depth of the book and the internal psyches of the two brothers - classic Sally Rooney style. However, I felt it stretched on a bit too long.

Good but long

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Deeply moving and disturbing in equal parts. Superb narration brings characters and emotions to life with every word and nuance.

Intensely beautiful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

How does she do it? What a loving story. Families are complicated. Love is complicated. These people feel so incredibly real and nuanced. My real life felt like a distraction as I read this.

Characters I lived inside of

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.