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Lead book review

A wish-fulfilment romance: Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney, reviewed

Rooney’s fourth novel is another case of compare and contrast, with various pairings of anxious characters struggling through their twenties and thirties in picturesque Dublin

28 September 2024

9:00 AM

28 September 2024

9:00 AM

Intermezzo Sally Rooney

Faber, pp.432, 20

An earworm from the time of Covid: the sound of Connell and Marianne having breathless sex, bedsprings squeaking. I’m talking not about 2020’s hit TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s bestselling second novel, Normal People but about the relentless piss-take featured on BBC Radio 4’s Dead Ringers. After every few skits the show would cut to an audio clip of the two undergraduates going hard at it.

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