Welcome back, friends! This month has been a struggle when it comes to reading. I have been so busy that I’ve barely had time to read, and when I have had time I haven’t felt like reading. So, I haven’t made much progress on my reading goal for this year. But at least I’m getting the blog done, and I’m taking that as a win. And on that note, I have a PSA that I will not be posting reviews for the next two months as am going on vacation and won’t have time. But on to this month’s book, I read Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. And I made a Mezzo Americano cocktail.
Mezzo Americano Recipe
1.5oz Aperol
1oz Gin
1oz Lemonade*
2oz Orange Juice
~1oz Soda Water
1 wedge Orange
*this is an optional ingredient.
In a cocktail shaker with ice, add aperol, gin, lemonade, and orange juice. Shake then strain into a highball glass with ice. Top with soda, garnish, and enjoy.
This drink was really good! There’s about 500 different recipes for this cocktail or ones similar to it. So, I chose the recipe that I thought I would like the most. I should mention that I couldn’t find the key ingredient chinotto anywhere, so I substituted orange juice and soda instead. And of course, I also added my special ingredient, lemonade. Early in the novel, Margaret orders a lemonade and I honestly couldn’t think of anything better. The traditional Mezzo Americano is made with lime juice, but I didn’t add that since I was already adding lemonade. And because of the similarity in those ingredients, it worked great and I really enjoyed this cocktail!
Intermezzo Synopsis
(from book cover)
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
Review
“What if life is just a collection of essentially unrelated experiences? Why does one thing have to follow meaningfully from another?”
Well, let’s just get into it because this is going to be a tough one and I don’t have much to say. This is my first time reading a Sally Rooney novel, and I am definitely intrigued by her writing. However, that was the only thing that intrigued me in this entire novel. Which is why I ended up not finishing this one. And you may be saying, “Teghann how can you write a review on a book you didn’t finish?” And to that I’d say, “I really, really tried to finish and I did get 3/4 of the way through, but I have no more time or energy to give to this novel and need to be done.”
I am torn with Intermezzo. Rooney’s writing is so beautiful and thoughtful, and drew me into the characters immediately. I love how she used completely different writing styles depending on which brother was the focus of the chapter. It made it feel like you were inside the minds of these characters and highlighted their similarities and differences in a unique way. Where Peter’s chapters were kind of a stream of consciousness style with short, punchy sentences, Ivan’s chapters were more formulaic and descriptive.
Similar to other stream of consciousness writer (and fellow Dubliner) James Joyce, I found it interesting that Rooney doesn’t use quotation marks or paragraph breaks to signal dialogue. This did take some getting used to in the first chapter, but it added to that stream of consciousness style in an intriguing way. Unfortunately, this style of writing in Peter’s chapters did sometimes end up sounding a bit like Yoda and feeling awkward. And her prose was sometimes too descriptive it became all telling and no showing.
Beyond that, I really don’t have other praise for this novel. Unfortunately, beautiful and unique writing can only do so much. My biggest complaint is essentially that Intermezzo is ridiculously boring. It’s just two guys living painfully normal lives. No suspense, no intrigue, no drama really of any kind. I found it so hard to want to come back to this book that it actually is the main reason I didn’t read much this month. And it’s hard to find positive things to say about a novel boring enough to put me into a reading slump.
The characters were all one-dimensional, even Peter and Ivan. All they do is think about themselves, have sex every few pages, and then Ivan plays chess. So, maybe if you’re into chess or love sex scenes in every chapter this one would be more interesting for you than it was for me. This novel is supposed to be a portrayal of grief, but I didn’t find the introspection on grief after their father’s death overly insightful. It’s just boring men complaining about their lives and then using women to help them move through their issues.
Ivan’s chapters, in my opinion, were the best part of the novel. Peter is too insufferable, ableist, and too far up his own ass for me to care for anything he did. But Ivan stood out as a slightly more nuanced and interesting character. However, I’m interested in hearing from people in the community what they thought of the depiction of autism in this novel. It seemed not completely stereotypical to me, but it would be interesting to hear from someone who is more capable of speaking on that topic than I am.
Overall, Intermezzo was tough to review. I loved the writing, but I hated the book. It was character-driven, so little plot is expected, but literally nothing happens in this novel. It was boring and the characters weren’t fleshed out enough for me to be interested in them without a plot. Shout out to last month’s novel, All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker, as a fantastic example of a character-driven novel. So, I don’t think I’ll be recommending this one unless you love chess and don’t hate boring men who use women. However, I would still be interested in reading other Sally Rooney novels as her brilliant writing is the only thing that kept me from DNF-ing this book earlier and giving it a 0. That being said, definitely still try the cocktail!
And a final reminder that there will be no reviews until May when I am back and settled in from my vacation (oddly enough I am going to Dublin, so this book was an interesting look into the city). See you in May 🙂
My Rating:
Thanks for reading! And, if you read the book or try the cocktail let me know in a comment or on Instagram. Also, if you haven’t yet read my previous reviews, I recommend reading Come and Get It, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow if you liked this one!
Teghann
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Is that a kangaroo in the snow in the background??!