Three years after her last novel, the wait has an expiration date for die-hard fans of Irish author Sally Rooney’s readings: her fourth book, Intermezzo, will go on sale on September 26. A subscriber to the term vulnerability, Rooney has already published several novels so far this decade, such as Normal People, with an award-winning screen adaptation included, Conversations Between Friends or Where Are You, the Beautiful World -published in Spain by Random House.
Intermezzo is about complicated relationships between young people, Rooney’s signature signature, focusing, this time, on a story about love, family and grief surrounding two brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek. “Since I began working on this novel several years ago, its characters and their relationships have become an important part of my life,” the author details, speaking to AP News.
The publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux has given details of the synopsis: “Peter – a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – apparently has little in common with his younger brother Ivan – a textbook misfit, professional chess player -. When their father dies , the brothers’ lives will take an unexpected turn: the apparently successful and competent Peter will begin to self-medicate and find it increasingly difficult to maintain a two-way relationship with his first love, Sylvia, and a university student, Naomi. Ivan, for his part, will find himself romantically involved with an older woman, Margaret.”
At only 33 years old, the Irish novelist has only published international best sellers, becoming one of the most celebrated and popular authors of the decade. With millions of copies sold, Normal People along with Conversations Between Friends have been adapted to the screen as a television series for the BBC. Another clear sign of her success was her latest novel, Where Are You, Beautiful World, which sold more than 40,000 copies in five days after its publication in September 2021.
Named in 2022 by Time magazine as one of the hundred most influential people, Rooney and her next novel represent “constant notoriety” for booksellers, as stated by Bea Carvalho, from the English bookstore chain Waterstone.
“She is one of the authors most beloved by our booksellers,” declares Carvalho, who remembers the book signing of Where Are You, the Beautiful World as a great event, “after the turbulent period of confinements and store closures: a reminder of the joy that can be found in the bookstore community,” he recalls to The Guardian.
Defined by her editor as “sharp, funny and different”, the Irish author will make the international presentation of Intermezzo on September 26. With this new novel, she hopes “to have done some justice to her characters and that they too can find a place in the lives of readers.”
