Intermezzo, Novel By Sally Rooney For Millennials But Not Every Chess Player

Were you fascinated by The Queen’s Gambit, the 2020 miniseries by Netflix, and how chess is a unifying theme of the story about Beth Harmon’s life? Imagine a new novel that uses chess to connect storylines about a chess prodigy and his older brother and even takes its title from a well-known chess term. You might be interested in Intermezzo, the fourth novel by Sally Rooney.

Here’s what you should know about Intermezzo and its author to decide:

• Who Is Sally Rooney, The Author?
• Complexity Of Adult Friendships In Intermezzo
• Rooney Writes Lusty Fantasy For Millennial Readers
• Who Reads Sally Rooney?
• What Is Rooney’s Style Of Writing?
• How Is Chess Term Intermezzo Meaningful For Rooney’s Book?
• Accuracy Of Chess Play In Intermezzo
• How Interested In Chess Is Rooney?

Who Is Sally Rooney, The Author?

Rooney, who lives in County Mayo, Ireland, where she was born, is considered one of the foremost millennial writers. Her first three novels are international bestsellers, and her work has been translated into more than 40 languages. BBC adapted her first two novels—Conversations with Friends and Normal People—as television series. Her third novel Beautiful World, Where Are You maintains her focus on “the complexity of adult friendships.” Intermezzo continues in this vein.

Complexity Of Adult Friendships In Intermezzo

Two brothers—Ivan and Peter Koubek—and their romantic entanglements are the focus of the book. The book’s title is influenced by the passion of Ivan, 22, for chess. He is considered a chess prodigy. When the book begins, he is a FIDE master with one norm for the international master title. His brother is Peter, 32, a lawyer. Both are grieving the recent death of their father as well as a distant relationship with their mother who had divorced him when Ivan was five and later remarried.

As complicated as the brothers’ relationship with each other is, it is overshadowed by their “romantic friendships.” Peter is in a relationship with two women: Sylvia who is the love of his life and Naomi who is his passion for the moment. Equally complicated is the relationship that Ivan begins with Margaret who is 14 years older, has been married for eight years, but is estranged from her alcoholic husband.

It’s a chess event that brings Ivan and Margaret together. He plays a 10-game simul in an arts center where Margaret is the program director—and wins all the games. (For chess enthusiasts, this is one game fewer than the simul that Beth Harmon made famous on Netflix and later YouTube.)

After the simul, Margaret gives Ivan a ride, first to the Cobweb, an Irish pub where other chess players are gathering, and then to Ivan’s home, where he invites her inside. After he asks, “Can I kiss you?” they quit talking about chess. (Actually, the importance of chess in the book now almost disappears.) As they spend the night together, the dialogue includes an occasional “Ivan, oh God” groan by Margaret until the sun comes up.

Rooney Writes Lusty Fantasy For Millennial Readers

Time described Rooney’s genre as “lusty fantasy”—and identified her as the leading exemplar of this style—when it named her one of the 100 most influential people in global culture in 2022. The magazine called her a “rare writer,” praised her influence on modern romance writers, and called her one of the “titans,” a powerful and highly influential figure in their field.

Irish writer Anne Enright defends Rooney’s approach by saying that “Rooney manages to be sexually explicit without being smutty.” In an interview with The Guardian, Rooney said that to avoid writing about modern love would be a “bit of a copout” and that “the erotic is a huge engine in the stories of all my books.” She adds, “That doesn’t mean the characters are always about to get into bed together right now, but in lots of the relationships the driver is erotic tension or desire.”

The New York Times depicts Rooney as “the voice of the millennial generation… because of her ability to capture the particular angst and confusion of young love, friendship and coming-of-age in our fraught digital era.” What could be more representative of the digital era than online chess, which makes its debut in modern romance writing with Intermezzo and is occasionally referred to in several sections? Chess.com even sponsored a tournament to celebrate the release of the book in late 2024. 

Who Reads Sally Rooney?

Rooney’s novels appeal to a wide audience but particularly to the group known as millennials, also known as Generation Y, born between 1981 and 1996. A well-known chess-playing millennial is WCM Lula Roberts, a chess streamer and content creator from Jersey, who writes about Intermezzo, “Yes, I know it was written just for me.”

In her 2024 news report of the London Chess Classic for Chess.com, Roberts even quotes Ivan, “We recognize patterns when there are no patterns ... like there's a meaning behind everything." (She read the book on her way to and from the tournament and described Rooney’s focus as dealing “with angsty 20-somethings.”)

What Is Sally Rooney’s Style Of Writing?

The Guardian praises Rooney’s style and how “she sticks with a scene and draws it out, often just the delicate dance of talk between two people in a room.” She writes in a staccato style of short fast sentences, particularly about Peter that highlights his anxieties. Her unconventional writing style also embraces the omission of quotation marks around dialogue. The [London] Times observes that sections of Intermezzo “are written using a stream-of-consciousness style heavily reminiscent of James Joyce, who apparently still looms over all Irish novelists”—and particularly Rooney in this book.

How Is Chess Term Intermezzo Meaningful For Rooney’s Book?

Rooney explained to The Times that the chess term “refers to a move in which a player defers an expected move.” For the book and its characters, she added: “It was useful for me to think of this period in the characters’ lives as a kind of interval. But then I suppose life itself is an interval: brief and of uncertain meaning.”

I suppose life itself is an interval: brief and of uncertain meaning.
—Sally Rooney

The Irish writer challenges the idea that lives should follow a logical progression. Intermezzo has several unexpected twists—much like a chess game when a player executes an intermezzo to change a game's dynamics. In Chapter 2, she concludes a section by asking: "What if life is just a collection of essentially unrelated experiences? Why does one thing have to follow meaningfully from another?"

Relating the term to chess history, many famous games have beautiful intermezzo moves such as the game in 1911 between Jose Raul Capablanca and Aron Nimzowitsch. Nimzowitsch’s bishop captured his opponent’s knight, and Nimzowitsch expected Capablanca to take the capturing bishop as the next move to maintain material equality. However, Capablanca responded instead with an in-between move that brought an inescapable threat of checkmate.

Accuracy Of Chess Play In Intermezzo

To portray tournament formats and the contemporary chess world accurately, Rooney turned to the Chess Society of Trinity College Dublin (where she had studied) which is active on Chess.com with a club. In particular, three members—Sean Doyle, Conor Nolan, and Peter Carroll—were very supportive. About their assistance and answers to her questions, Rooney wrote that they “were truly generous and helpful.”

However, some chess players in Ireland question Rooney’s depiction of how Ivan prepares for tournaments. “He does so by reading a book—nowadays a top player wouldn’t do that. He or she would use a computer because everything you’d want to research would be on a database,” said Mark Watkins of the Cork Chess Club.

As the novel develops, Rooney randomly mentions chess terms and sprinkles about the names of openings such as the London System and King’s Gambit typically in a pointless manner. GMs Magnus Carlsen and Bobby Fischer are mentioned by name but without any meaningful connection. For example, Carlsen’s name appears as Peter is joking to himself about his brother “playing the seducer.”

About Ivan, the chess prodigy, and how she relates to that character in her book, Rooney said to The Times: “Ivan is very hard on himself about his social skills…. Still, he definitely feels isolated and sometimes struggles to participate smoothly in the conventions of social life. That wasn’t hard for me to imagine. I myself found social life completely mystifying until I was in my early twenties or so. I probably took refuge in books, and Ivan takes refuge in chess, but I don’t think it’s all that different.”

I myself found social life completely mystifying until I was in my early twenties or so.
—Sally Rooney

How Interested In Chess Is Rooney?

Rooney said, “I had a lot of fun with the chess aspects of the novel. Like a lot of people I got interested in chess during lockdown (caused by the COVID-19 pandemic which in Ireland began in 2020).… I had to try and learn more about the world of contemporary competitive chess because I wanted to get the details right.”

Is Intermezzo a novel you should read? Yes, if you are a fan of Rooney, are a millennial, enjoy a different style of writing, or can read about complex relationships without being judgmental. If you’re looking for a novel about chess, wait for another to appear soon—chess is so much in the mainstream culture now.

If you’ve already read Intermezzo, drop a comment and let us know what you think.