Set your alarms everybody, new fiction from Sally Rooney is coming this spring. Everyone's favourite Irish millennial author has announced her fourth novel, Intermezzo, with publisher Faber breaking the news. While the cover for what is sure to be another bestseller is yet to be unveiled, we do have a release date for Intermezzo. So keep scrolling for all the details.
Here's a sneak-peak at the opening lines of Intermezzo
Over the weekend, Faber Books released an official sneak-peak into the opening lines of Rooney's book, and boy, does it look like we're in for a treat. Get a first read, below.
Is there a release date for Intermezzo?
We will not be left pining after Intermezzo for too long. The novel will debut internationally on September 24, 2024, and will be published by Knopf in Canada, Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US, and Allen & Unwin locally in Australia.
By the time Intermezzo is published, it will have been three years since we climbed into the deftly rendered Rooney-verse with Beautiful World, Where Are You?
What is Intermezzo about?
This time around, Rooney's novel will follow two brothers in the aftermath of their father's death. The eldest brother, Peter Koubek, is a 30-year-old Dublin lawyer who is sturdy and successful. On the other hand, 22-year-old Ivan Koubek is the antithesis to his older brother; socially awkward, a loner, and not to mention a competitive chess player.
However, grief will make a mess of these once concrete dynamics. Peter has begun self-medicating to sleep and is struggling to maintain his relationships with two very different women: his first love Sylvia and Naomi, a college student who is too young to be taking life so seriously (there she is, the archetypal Sally Rooney character). Meanwhile, Ivan becomes entangled with Margaret, an older woman with a turbulent past.
Expect musings on grief, redemption, desire, and hopefully some Rooney bread-and-butter like horny sex scenes, Marxism, and class tensions.
Want to treat yourself to more Rooney while you wait? Why not begin with her 2017 debut Normal People or the accompanying BBC series starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones? Otherwise, you can revisit the Rooney-verse with Conversations with Friends.
