Silly (but brilly) Sally Rooney

Communicating my thoughts on Intermezzo, a book about people who can't communicate

I finished Sally Rooney’s new book Intermezzo on the train from Plymouth to London last week, at the beginning of a long journey back home that began before the sun was up. It rose as I read, dispelling the spooky and cold early morning mist and lighting up the clouds in time for the person next to me to notice the tears on my face. 

Earlier in the week in this perfect reading spot: English garden, un-English weather

Yeah I cried, I absolutely cried. A perfect and beautiful book, I loved it so much. 

And look at that, I’m talking like she writes. I find Rooney’s writing to be so affected at times and yet that’s exactly what it is, affecting, I have been affected by her. I think it’s part of what gives her books such an immersive quality; when I am interrupted reading I feel as though I am coming up from under water. She is so good at describing intangible things, like the feeling of sitting in an audience watching a performance as a room full of strangers is collectively transformed by the experience.

There’s another passage that’s stuck with me where one of the characters, Margaret, thinks about trying to contain the fallout of her messy romantic life like there’s a net she can cast around everything that’s escaping her control. She’s a divorcée who’s fallen in love with someone much too young for her, but she realizes the chaos agent that has upended her life, this new relationship, is the very thing that’s made it worth living again. (Sounds hyperbolic, but her ex is an alcoholic and her circumstances are pretty tragic tbh.) “Life, after all, has not slipped free of its netting. There is no such life, slipping free: life is itself the netting,” Rooney writes.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot because I am your standard type-A control freak trying to white-knuckle my way through these anxious times while also believing I am just a speck in an infinite, uncaring universe. You know what has really helped me wrestle with my illusions of control? Talking it out with friends and family.

Which brings me to the other thing I want to say about Intermezzo. These characters hold themselves back from communicating with their dearest loved ones in a way that is absolutely incomprehensible to me. They deal with relationship drama, struggle with suicidal depression, and make life-altering decisions without confiding in ANYONE. There are scenes with Margaret and her best friend where the best friend suspects Margaret’s finally happy again but neither of them says anything about it. These are two women in their 30’s; I tried to picture myself hanging out with any of my friends, let alone my closest confidante, and hiding the biggest thing going on in my life, about which I am desperate for advice. CANNOT RELATE. Same goes for the brothers at the center of the book’s plot, who are down bad grieving their dad’s recent death. These siblings, these best friends, even the couples are constantly all “well, I wouldn’t want to pry” or “I won’t ask, it’s none of my business” to one another. What do you mean you don’t want to pry?? Who says that to a best friend??

Oprah would have gotten it out of her.

Rooney is Irish, as are her characters, and they’re so repressed it’s like reading about aliens. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, and I know from living in France that Europeans find me American af, but I wanted to give them all a big hug and a sweet treat and be like angel, talk to me. You don’t have to suffer alone.

As we head into election week, about which my employer forbids the sharing of any thoughts or opinions online (SILENCEDT!!), I just want to say that I truly believe emotional intimacy will save us. What is the literal point of having an inner circle if you don’t let them, you know, in?