At its surface, Intermezzo is a story of sibling rivalry refracted through the prism of sudden death. The novel follows two Irish brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek, living in contemporary Dublin.

As Ivan puts a piece down and Peter sees the board with new eyes, the reader realizes that the entire novel has been a single, beautiful, painful intermezzo. It is the pause before the final movement. And in that pause, Sally Rooney proves she is not just a chronicler of millennial angst. She is a structural architect of the human heart.

A successful, charismatic barrister. Outwardly stable but mentally fraying, he is caught between two women: his first love, , who left him after a life-altering accident, and , a chaotic university student. Ivan (22):