I thought it perplexing when told that Intermezzo felt similar to other works by writer Sally Rooney. Certainly, it shares some familiar ingredients: it’s set (mostly) in Dublin, explores personal relationships, and the characters seem to have perpetually miserable lives. Yet the resemblance stops there. Rooney’s new book is a bold exploration of love and grief, and an exposition of how not all of life’s problems can be solved by logic and intelligence.
The epigraph of Intermezzo is taken from Part II of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: Aber fühlst du nicht jetzt den Kummer? (Aber spielst du nicht jetzt Schach?) (But don’t you feel grief now? (But aren’t you now playing chess?)) The (nonsensical) question is posed in the context of ‘language games,’ a central tenet in Wittgenstein’s philosophy in which he rejects a general definition of language or words and adopts instead the ‘meaning as use’ concept. In this view, words (or sentences) do not have set definitions, but their meaning depends entirely on how they are used.
Take the word ‘game’ (spiele in the original German). What’s a game? The problem isn’t that the reader cannot conjure one singular definition of ‘game’; rather, the meaning of the word changes depending on the context in which it is used. Wimbledon is hardly the same as hide-and-seek, say. In the quote, Wittgenstein discusses grief as a pattern (Muster) that weaves through life. In contrast to chess, though the statement ‘I do feel grief now’ is logically permissible, such a response fails to capture the atemporal and personal nature of grief.
Indeed, much like grief, philosophy and logic are deeply woven into the fabric of Intermezzo. Peter and Ivan Koubek are brothers. Peter is a moderately successful Dublin-based barrister in his thirties, and Ivan is a touring chess prodigy whose glory days are behind him. In typical Rooney fashion, the story revolves around love in its various instantiations: the Koubek brothers’ love for their late father, Ivan’s love for an older woman, and Peter’s love for his former partner who is unable to have sex due to a recent accident and his current, more youthful companion.
The central struggle in the story is one between the two brothers. They deeply resent each other, that much is clear from the start. Why? From the surface, the two seem like they would get along: both Ivan and Peter are clearly highly intelligent, and they both have careers that revolve around using logic to solve complex problems. They also both seem to be entangled in complicated age-gap relationships. The law, of course, is a much more social profession than chess, and the shared dating dilemma seems to alienate rather than unite the pair. In fact, our perception of the two will change drastically throughout the book.
Take the following exchange between the brothers. At dinner, Ivan states that Peter can’t be a coward because he speaks in court every day, something most would find intimidating. In response, Peter states: ‘Not if you were good at it. No. It’s easy to do things you’re already good at, that’s not courageous. Trying to do something you might not be capable of doing… We’re being hard on ourselves in a way, he remarks, because both our lives involve some voluntary exposure to what other people might call defeat. Which I think requires a certain degree of courage. Even if just psychologically.’
In which Ivan responds: ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I cope with it all too well. It bothers me a lot to lose. It bothers me a lot too, says Peter.’
In many ways, both characters are embodiments of their profession. Peter is cool, calm, and composed, and especially adept at both social situations and tricky conversations. Much like the law, when presented with a tricky moral question and unorthodox arrangements, he suffers what can only be described as a complete meltdown. Ivan is nervous, reflective, and deeply kind. Bashful as a bishop, he’s nevertheless unafraid to trade and make sacrifices for the things and people he loves.
By setting grief beside logic, and chess beside law, Rooney exposes the limits of systems that promise order while life remains defiantly unruly. The Koubek brothers’ problems are never solved by the cold elegance of an opening or an overlooked precedent; instead, they are revealed, move by messy move, as an attempt to translate private anguish into language that others might understand.
That effort, Rooney suggests, is the real game. One without clear rules, clocks or victors. When the novel closes, nothing has been solved, yet something has shifted: grief is acknowledged, love is embraced, and the silence between two men sounds a little less deafening. If earlier Rooney books questioned whether intimacy could survive economics, Intermezzo asks whether it can survive logic itself. The answer is qualified but hopeful, delivered in prose that slips between clinical precision and romantic ache.
So yes, the novel still roams Dublin streets and fearful millennials in messy relationships. But to dismiss it as more of the same is to miss the daring way Rooney turns a philosophical foil into a fierce tale of love and loss. Readers willing to sit with ambiguity – who can bear, for a while, to feel grief now – will find in Intermezzo the author’s most incisive and, paradoxically, consoling work to date.
Peter Chen at Home 
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