We are all, mentally and physically, queuing up to read Interlude, Sally Rooney’s new novel. On TikTok you can see the queues of customers in front of British bookstores with the caption “Happy Intermezzo day”, they try to get copies signed by the author or they are satisfied with the merchandising with the (already iconic) blue Great Dane, still a status symbol of intellectual coolness. The new release in the Anglo-Saxon world (in Italy it’s still more than a month away) resembles a party, exclusive enough to want to be part of, accessible enough to feel like it’s a bit yours too, and this is perhaps the secret of Sally Rooney’s success .
Interlude is the Irish writer’s fourth novel, her last Where are you beautiful world? while the most famous is Normal people, the book that brought her almost unexpectedly to global success and on which the TV series of the same name was based. Rooney, born in 1991, is considered the voice of the Millennials, capable of recounting the life experience of an entire generation between shared concerns, observations on current events, discussions on capitalism and feminism, and a precise investigation of relationships, sex and human bonds. Interlude tells the story of two brothers, Peter is a thirty-year-old lawyer and Ivan is a young chess champion. They grew up divided, but after the death of their father they find themselves experiencing a loss that unites them but which they both experience differently. Peter, as we read in the synopsis, is grappling with «his relationships with two very different women – his first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a university student for whom life is a big joke». Ivan, on the other hand, is 22 years old and is dating a woman older than him with a “turbulent” past.
Einaudi, who will publish the Italian version of the book, speaks «of brothers and lovers, of family and romantic intimacies, of relationships that do not entirely adapt to conventional structures». The enthusiasm we are observing these days in the United States and Great Britain (with 2500 copies given away to journalists, influencers and celebrities, from Sarah Jessica Parker to Ayo Edebiri) has already made the book a must have, even a fetish to wear in your bag and show off on the subway. But above all there is a great desire to read Interlude and talk about it, iIn Italy we just have to wait for November 12th (for the Italian version, the English one is already available in bookstores in Italy too).
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