Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

---

🎻 Book Review: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Grief, love, logic... and everything you can’t explain in a sentence

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5 out of 5 stars)
A quiet novel that absolutely devastated me — and somehow comforted me, too.
I didn’t know what to expect going in, but this book knew me. It felt like being seen in all my grief, all my contradictions, and all my questions I never thought a novel would echo back at me.

---

⚠️ Content & Trigger Warnings

This book contains sensitive themes, including:

• Death (parental loss, illness-related)

• Grief and existential depression

• Age-gap relationships

• Sexual content

• Exploitation and power imbalance

• Verbal and physical family conflict

• Divorce and emotional manipulation

• Disability (chronic pain)

Read with care if you’re navigating grief or emotionally heavy relationships 💔

---

🧭 Overview

Title: Intermezzo
Author: Sally Rooney
Published: 2024
Genre: Literary Fiction / Contemporary
Vibes:

• Grief that lingers

• Relationships that resist easy answers

• Age gaps, emotional debts, and the beauty of messy people

• Slow burn, but in the best, most deliberate way

This is my first Sally Rooney book, and it won’t be my last. If grief, complexity, flawed love, and conditional logic are your jam? You’re in for something quietly spectacular.

---

⚠️ Spoiler Alert

From here on out, this review includes FULL PLOT SPOILERS, including how things end for Peter, Ivan, Sylvia, Naomi, and Margaret. If you want to go in fresh, now’s the time to hit pause.

---

🧩 Full Plot Summary: Messy People, Beautiful Logic

At the heart of Intermezzo are two brothers: Peter (emotionally guarded, tangled in a web of past and present lovers) and Ivan (a grieving 22-year-old chess prodigy searching for connection after losing their father to cancer).

Peter is torn between:

• Naomi, a much younger sex worker who relies on him financially

• Sylvia, his first love, now living with chronic pain after an accident

Ivan, meanwhile, finds a surprising, intimate relationship with Margaret, a 36-year-old woman whose marriage ended in abuse and whose life feels stalled.

---

🧠 Philosophy Check: IF/THEN Logic and Why It Broke My Heart

There’s a moment in Intermezzo that knocked the wind out of me — not because it was loud or dramatic, but because it was logically elegant and emotionally devastating. Rooney weaves in a discussion of IF/THEN statements — and for anyone who’s taken a first-year philosophy course (like I did), you’ll know exactly what’s coming:

In formal logic, the statement “If P, then Q” is always true when P is false, no matter what Q is.
This is called a vacuous truth.

It sounds strange, but it’s deeply meaningful.

My late father-in-law used to tease me with this exact logical trap:

“What did you do after you combed your hair this morning?”
The joke, of course, is that I didn’t comb my hair — so I could say anything followed, and the statement would still be true.
It’s clever, yes — but also profound.

Here’s why it hit so hard in Intermezzo: so much of the novel is built around false premises.

• Peter assumes: If Sylvia wants to sleep with me again, then she wants a future with me.

But maybe that “if” is already false.

• Ivan believes: If Margaret accepts me, then age won’t matter.

But does it? Is that “if” valid at all?

• The brothers cling to counterfactuals: If Dad were still alive, then we’d be closer, better, healed.

But he’s not. That “if” is false — and everything that follows is uncertain.

In logic, that makes the IF/THEN statement technically true.
In life? It makes it unbearably sad.

Rooney doesn’t throw this concept in for the sake of sounding smart. She uses it to structure emotional truth. It’s not just theory — it’s how grief works. It’s how regret works. It’s how people justify love, sex, distance, reconciliation.

And it’s exactly the kind of moment that made me realize:

This isn’t just a slow burn literary novel.
It’s a quiet philosophical ache in disguise.

---

🔥 Emotional Highlights

• Ivan & Margaret: So tender, so honest. I saw myself in their careful negotiation of boundaries, fears, and age-gap dynamics.

• Peter & Sylvia: Their shared grief binds them, but their pain makes physical intimacy impossible. And yet—Rooney never forces closure.

• Peter & Naomi: Complicated, transactional, but not unkind. A relationship that asks whether affection without equality can still be real.

And then there’s Peter vs. Ivan: brothers locked in years of misunderstanding. When Peter learns Ivan’s girlfriend is older, he freaks. Hypocrisy, much?

The eventual fight? Ugly. But real. And Rooney doesn’t solve it with a hug—she makes them earn their way back to each other.

---

🏁 The Ending (Prepare Your Heart)

After a deep rift and a literal fight that leaves Ivan bloodied, the brothers are only brought back together by Margaret, who quietly bridges the gap during Ivan’s chess tournament.

Peter shows up. He doesn’t disrupt. He waits.
Ivan plays. Margaret intervenes.
And the brothers finally talk.

They make plans for Christmas. They try again. And it’s not perfect—but it’s human.

---

✍️ Final Thoughts: The Book That Got Me

This book felt personal. I’m in an age-gap relationship. I’ve lost my father to cancer. And I’ve tried, so many times, to explain that weird IF/THEN logic joke... only for people to look confused.

But Sally Rooney? She got it. And that felt like magic.

This book doesn’t explode. It simmers. It aches. It sits with your grief. And then it slowly whispers:

You’re not alone.

---

✨ My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

For me, this wasn’t just a novel. It was a resonance.
If you’ve lost someone, loved someone imperfectly, or ever felt like logic was your only way to survive feelings—this book might hit home like it did for me.

---

🛒 Want to read it?

👉 Buy Intermezzo by Sally Rooney on Amazon (Affiliate link — treat yourself to the slow burn)

---

📚 If You Loved This, Try:

• Normal People by Sally Rooney – For that messy, lingering romance pain

• Good Material by Dolly Alderton – A breakup novel that unpacks emotional maturity

• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong – For poetic grief and family trauma

• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara – If you want to ruin your emotional stability completely (in the best way)