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Cathryn_Conroy
A Profound Literary Novel: A Philosophical Study in Grief and Forgiveness
This novel cast some kind of spell over me. This is literary fiction at its finest with parts unfolding in ways that seared my soul. It is a philosophical study in grief for what might have been and will never be again, but it is also a study in forgiveness even when the hurdles to forgiving seem impossible.
Written by Irish author Sally Rooney, this is the story of two brothers who are grieving for their much beloved father who has died of cancer. The brothers have rather complicated personal lives, which their grief seems to magnify as they take it out on each other in rather cruel ways, both physical and emotional.
Peter is 32, a successful solicitor in Dublin, Ireland. He is in love with Sylvia, a former girlfriend who is his real soul partner in life. Sylvia was in a terrible accident when she was 25, and it has left her unable to have sex without pain; for this reason, she broke up with Peter, but their intense emotional relationship continues. Peter relies on Sylvia for guidance, advice, and succor. Meanwhile, he is involved with a much younger woman, Naomi. While she is not a prostitute, Naomi has a sexual relationship with Peter that is predicated on his paying her living expenses. She has what Peter views as an embarrassing past, posing for online pornographic photos. To Naomi, everything is a big joke, not to be taken seriously. Life gets very complicated when Naomi is evicted from her shady apartment and moves in with Peter.
Peter's much-younger brother, Ivan, is 22, a chess prodigy, and recent college graduate. He is painfully shy and socially awkward. He is often at a loss for words, having no clue as to the proper thing to say in certain situations. The only work he can find is freelance data analysis. He is floundering as he tries to become an independent adult. Soon after his father's funeral, Ivan is invited to a chess demonstration and workshop at an arts center in Leitrim, a small rural town in northwestern Ireland, where he will play 10 opponents simultaneously. The opponents are part of a local chess club, including a 10-year-old girl, and he handily wins all the matches. The program manager of the arts center, Margaret, is enthralled by Ivan, which is thrilling for him since no woman has ever felt this way about him. Margaret has her own troubled story. In addition to being 36 years old, she is separated from her alcoholic husband who doesn't want a divorce. She insists that she and Ivan keep their relationship a secret, as she is worried about the small-town gossip. Of course, these things never stay secret for long.
How Peter and Ivan grieve for their father while falling in love is the heart and soul of the story. The brothers have never been particularly close, but when Peter finds out about Margaret he says unforgiveable things, and Ivan cuts him out of his life. Yes, it's all a messy, soap opera, but in Sally Rooney's sophisticated and talented hands, the story is much more about feelings and emotions than an unseemly focus on the bad boy behavior.
The chapters alternate between the points of view of Peter, Ivan, and Margaret. Peter's chapters are written in a stream-of-consciousness style, while those featuring Ivan and Margaret are a more typical narrative style. The raw messiness of families—those in which we are born and those we create with dear friends—is on full display.
An "intermezzo" in music is a short light piece between the acts of a serious drama or opera, and the story told here is an interlude in Peter and Ivan's lives—an interlude of grieving that will either launch them into the future or break them with all the anguish from their past.
This is a profound literary novel. It is provocative and tender with elegiac overtones that are so emotionally rendered that we readers feel Peter and Ivan's pain and joy. And isn't that the point of great literature?
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