A personal philosophy of love

Famous and Beloved Book Club: Sally September in October, Issue 2

This is the second of a 4-post book club for Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. It covers Part 1 (up to page 201. Next week (October 17) will be about Part 2 (up to page 330).

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The first post in this book club was too mean. Someone came up to me at a party and said, “we disagree, I love Sally Rooney.” I love her too! When she hits she really hits more than any other contemporary novelist, a feeling I got throughout the remainder of Part 1 of Intermezzo.

My qualms with Rooney are mostly to do with her preachiness in ideology, that grounding romance in material conditions has to be some lofty, theory-laden chore. It’s really not that distracting of a problem, but maybe once a chapter will make me roll my eyes. Usually it’s especially tempered by the acuteness of Rooney’s familiarity with contemporary vernacular. The way young people look and speak and text one another—even the formal lack of quotation marks—is exactly how I feel the real world is (unlike the Aristotelian way college students interact in, say, The Idiot). Some people somewhere probably react to Rooney’s colloquialisms as an overindulgence in sticcado awkwardness of coming-of-age. I don’t read it that way. As seen in Intermezzo’s Margaret, new relationships and everything unsaid are frustrating from cradle to grave.

Something I’m noticing in this, though, is that her representation of youthful and contemporaneous vernacular is a little less acute. At some point in Part 1, Peter is reflecting on some sexts unsent, citing “the devil smiling” and “droplets emojis.” Surely this is meant to be a little cringeworthy, in keeping with Peter’s apt and self-referential characterization as a 30-something desperate for connection with a bitchy 22-year-old. But it is misplaced, maybe a little dated. Later, Naomi is wearing “a cropped sweatshirt,” skirt, and tights. I know the British Isles are 10 years behind us, but that is a little on the nose. 

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