Intermezzo
By Sally Rooney
Faber and Faber
ISBN: 9780571365470
432pp.

Grief is an all-encompassing emotion that most of us are woefully ill-prepared to handle.

In a memoir titled Notes on Grief, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche views the experience of coping with loss as “a cruel kind of education.” Contrary to the popular perception of insights provided in the Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ model, mourning isn’t a linear or systematic means of embracing the fact that we’ve lost people to the jaws of death. Instead, the grieving process is often chaotic and opens the floodgates to a surfeit of complex emotions.

Irish author Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo features two brothers who are deep in the throes of grieving and undergo a swift transformation in the weeks after their father’s demise. Coincidentally, both men seek solace in the cosy familiarity of romantic relationships, either as a distraction from their bereavement or a quest to rebuild their lives in the midst of a soul-crushing tragedy.

Grief has a way of upending old certainties and transforming people in unexpected ways. Peter, a Dublin-based lawyer in his thirties, finds himself hurtling through life at an expeditious, if not dangerous, pace. Once viewed as an indestructible force, he now relies on medication to sleep. However, sleep isn’t the only challenge that he has to reckon with. As he mourns his father’s death, Peter is caught between his abiding love for his first love, Slyvia, and his seemingly romantic yet transactional equation with a college student named Naomi.

Twenty-two-year-old Ivan has always been the antithesis of his smooth-talking older sibling. A veritable wallflower, he excels at playing competitive chess. As Ivan grapples with an unprecedented loss, Ivan takes an uncharacteristic step: he begins a relationship with an older woman named Margaret, who has her........

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