Book Review: ‘Intermezzo,’ by Sally Rooney

INTERMEZZO, by Sally Rooney

A Sally Rooney backlash, in certain quarters, has been building. Her books are too white, it is said, and her politics too soft. She can be, in pursuit of a love story, a bit corny — or so it is said.

Her success rankles. Midnight release parties are scheduled in many bookstores for her new novel, “Intermezzo,” as if it were “Harry Potter,” Book 8. These parties may be cheerful communal events for some. For others, they are deeply uncool.

Asked once about his ambition, the novelist Peter De Vries replied that he yearned for a mass audience large enough for his elite audience to despise. Rooney, who is Irish, has reached this tricky plateau. She’s been called the Salinger of the Snapchat generation. She does less publicity than most other writers, yet she seems curiously overexposed.

I’ve had a small, personal taste of the Rooney backlash. The advance word about “Intermezzo” has not been good, at least among publishing’s smart young crowd. I’ve heard it called overlong and undercooked.

When I’ve replied that I admire “Intermezzo” almost without reservation — I fell into it like a goose-down comforter after a 15-mile hike in the sleet — the reaction has largely been disbelief. Some were as apoplectic as parrots. If I had to boil down the responses to my declarations of love to three letters, they’d be “LOL.”

Clearly this book is going to divide people.

“Intermezzo” is about two brothers, Peter, a successful barrister in Dublin, and Ivan, who is shyer, geekier, 10 years younger, wears ceramic braces and plays competitive chess. They are mourning the death of their father, and there is lingering bitterness between them. Our perceptions of Peter and Ivan will shift quite radically over the course of the novel, the way they do about the foster brothers in Martin Amis’s early novel “Success.”