November 12th6:30pm
This month we'll discuss Sally Rooney's newest, an exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love, Intermezzo.
“Come for the romance; stay for the meaning of life, of which, of course, love is a fundamental part.”
—Martin Doyle, The Irish Times
“That divide between what you believe and how you behave is one of the great themes of Intermezzo . . . This is new and deeper territory for Rooney . . . Intermezzo is in many ways a more truthful book . . . The work of an artist who is continually trying out new techniques and continually growing.”
—Laura Miller, Slate
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.
Reserve your place with a $5 voucher, redeemable on the night of the book club meeting on any product in store.