Chris's guest to discuss Intermezzo is Madeleine Callaghan (Maddy), Senior Lecturer in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. Maddy explains that Rooney's title alludes to the opening strategies of chess, in which players aim to set up the conditions they want for free play. But Rooney's characters find they can't arrange their lives the same way: they can neither identify the beginning nor put the pieces where they want. We meet Peter - torn between his sexual ideal in the younger Naomi and his Platonic match in old flame Sylvia - and Peter's student brother Ivan, the socially awkward chess champion who falls for the much older Margaret. Chris points out that the brothers have recently been bereaved by the loss of their father, a grief that is present without being mediated. With that bereavement, and troubled love affairs, the novel presents a lonely world in which emotional closeness is elusive, sex doesn't fully answer a person's needs, and the unfortunate dog symbolises neglected responsibilities. While commentators have made much of Rooney as millennial spokesperson, Maddy notes Intermezzo's place in the cerebral traditions of various European fictions. Rooney is also specifically interested in where modern Ireland is going, without perhaps having the answers. It feels like a moral work, but does it communicate worthwhile morals? And would the novel benefit from the ability to find humour in adverse circumstances, as in some of the most well-known Irish literature?

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