In her latest, fourth novel, Intermezzo, Sally Rooney continues her exploration of intimate relationships, albeit with a shift away from the clear political critique that characterised her earlier works. Rather than focusing on alienated relationships, the author explores the requirements that make personal relationships successful. This is linked to a second shift in perspective: Rooney now makes religious belief something that none of her characters question, but that is instead an essential part of unconditional love.
Rooney’s previous novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, ended with one character stepping back from activism, retreating into a subjective sense of peace and stability – dependent, the reader might think, on sufficient income. That choice felt tentative – perhaps an individual’s decision to pursue personal happiness over political engagement. With Intermezzo, however, this focus on private happiness and detachment from societal ills is presented not as a protagonist’s choice, but as a theme that permeates the entire narrative.
The novel focuses on two brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek, and their relationships. While both brothers experience obstacles in achieving personal fulfilment, the political elements that once gave the novelist’s protagonists a radical edge are not as prominent. Where we might expect Rooney’s young protagonists to challenge economic precarity or political hypocrisy within contemporary Irish society, this fades into the background as their concerns become far more personal.
Social difference plays a role, in terms of having the financial wherewithal to pay the rent, but the characters no longer stand out as much as a challenge to the establishment. The Koubek brothers’ half-Slovak background is little more than a narrative footnote, an embarrassment for the brother who strives to fit in with his professional colleagues, but provides no further depth or meaningful friction within the plot. We encounter characters (a lawyer, a freelance data analyst, an arts centre manager, a university lecturer and a student) whose worlds are or aspire to be middle-class, removed from the struggles of the working class that had a space in Rooney’s prior works.
One of the most significant shifts in Intermezzo is its treatment of religion. In prior novels, several of Rooney’s protagonists were atheist or agnostic, viewing the world through a materialist lens. Indeed, in Beautiful World, Where are You? Eileen, untypically, joins her life with that of a devout Christian before withdrawing into private happiness. While this instance might have been a character choice, Rooney recently stated in an interview with The Irish Times on the publication of Intermezzo:
I have gone from being dogmatic atheist to being very interested in the intellectual and spiritual traditions of Christianity. That’s a heritage that it would be dishonest of me to say isn’t central to who I am as a thinker and as a writer. There is something Christian about my work, even if I would not describe myself as straightforwardly religious. Like, I still struggle with the more supernatural aspects of religious belief.
This reflects some conversations had by the protagonists in Intermezzo as they discuss God and religion. While fervour varies, religious belief is no longer questioned or subverted but embraced as part of a personal transformation and the overall authorial point of view. As a consequence, Intermezzo veers dangerously close to sentimentality, wrapping up complex human conflicts in a neat bow of ‘spirituality’ and fulfilment in love.
When Walter Scott received letters complaining that Ivanhoe did not marry Rebecca at the end of his novel of the same name, he rejected such an ending as historically indefensible. Similarly, contemporary novelists who critically examine the Irish establishment need to provide plots and endings that force readers to unflinchingly confront the consequences of social class, social relations, upward and downward mobility, and the characters’ place in all of this.
Rooney’s previous protagonists often reflected a left-wing ethos, their relationships reflecting the alienation inherent in capitalist society. Now, however, her protagonists gravitate to places away from society. Ivan, despite some social and economic insights, imagines such a retreat with Marianne, suggesting that Rooney now views private, secluded happiness as viable solutions to the alienation once experienced. None of the people presented in the novel emerge from their comfort zone to seriously combat injustice:
I live in the middle of nowhere, by the way, she remarks.
Like outside town, you mean?
Right. I’m just renting a place out there for the moment.
Cool, he says. I’ve always wanted to live in the middle of
nowhere myself, but it hasn’t worked out like that.
The novel’s vision of love as a place apart is thereby disconnected from the broader struggles that haunt the real world. For readers who admired Rooney’s earlier critiques of alienation, Intermezzo may feel less like a continuation of her political journey and more like a departure from it.
This artistic trajectory seems at odds with Rooney’s political commitment. She is aware of the nature of the publishing establishment:
I often feel discouraged by the publishing industry. I often see new novels marketed as ‘for fans of Sally Rooney’. I find that so dispiriting – the invention of a certain type of person for the purposes of book marketing. And it makes me feel complicit in the commodification and cheapening of literary culture.
We cannot but agree. Rooney’s personal convictions remain unapologetically leftwing. She has taken bold stances and is highly respected in Ireland for protesting against Israel’s policies in Palestine, including her decision to withhold translation rights to Hebrew. Her articles in The Irish Times also reveal a biting critique of Western complicity in genocide against Palestinians, as she highlights the “moral depravity” of leaders who endorse this holocaust in the Middle East.
She has criticised the Irish government’s wavering stance on boycotting Israeli goods from the occupied territories and condemned their ‘see no evil’ attitude toward the US. Additionally, she is a prominent signatory of the latest open letter by artists calling for sanctions against Israel.
In her recent interview about Intermezzo published in The Irish Times, the author stated:
But I also don’t want to stay silent in the face of genocide. The horrors unfolding in Gaza feel to me like a turning point in history. How are we allowing this to happen? How is it possible that we have collectively failed to stop such a flagrant and unconcealed campaign of mass murder? These are extremely serious questions, perhaps more serious than we have yet realised.
There is no question but that she has put her head above the parapet. It is therefore surprising that instead of defying or questioning the social status quo in Ireland, Intermezzo seems to gravitate to the comforts of convention.
