Ivan and Peter Koubek’s father has just died, but neither seems willing to talk much about it, let alone to one another. After all, it’s not like the two brothers are even friends.
Peter, the eldest by a decade, pities his awkward, 22-year-old brother, a competitive chess player whose prowess for the game hasn’t done much to build his social skills or self-esteem. But after meeting Margaret, an older woman who’s emerging from the shadow of her own crisis, Ivan’s life has begun to blossom — and the same cannot be said for Peter. A human-rights lawyer — once optimistic, now jaded — Peter’s self-medicating and can’t stop sabotaging his relationships with Naomi, a wry, carefree college student, and Slyvia, his former flame and longtime love.
The days after tragedy are often hard to navigate and “Intermezzo,” the fourth novel from Irish author Sally Rooney, is a portrait of grief not fully internalized. In her astutely intimate style, Rooney wades through the convoluted emotions that follow tragedy: certainly heartache, but also relief and longing, guilt and joy, all on the cusp of transformation.
In sketching the contours of her characters, Rooney alternates between the perspectives as she did in her last novel, “Beautiful World, Where Are You.” Her dialogue, characteristically bare and without quotation marks, lends a distinct musicality to her prose.
As Peter’s mind becomes untethered by pills, Rooney’s close third-person voice dances over the line of spoken and unspoken, slurring together in long, drawn-out paragraphs as he wanders the streets of Dublin — meandering sentences broken by sharp staccatos of self-pity.
Ivan meanwhile, follows the well-trod path of other stunted men, intelligently methodical yet rambling, grasping at emotions with insufficient words. These instances of almost are where Rooney shines. She teases out near-ruptured emotions never fully felt by the conscience, untethering them from reality for our voyeuristic pleasure.
When Ivan first meets Margaret, Rooney notes that he has “an involuntary mental image of kissing her on the mouth: not even really an image, but an idea of an image, sort of a realization that it will be possible to visualize this at some later point.”
Margaret herself is struck by the uncanny sense that “life has slipped free of its netting” following her first encounter with Ivan. “It means nothing,” she thinks, then quickly course corrects. “That isn’t true: it means something, but the meaning is unfamiliar.”
This is often the meter of metamorphosis, the mundane swirl of emotions flirt past, illegible and unrealized until they inevitably burst, fully formed and so wholly overwhelming that they cannot be contained. And it is at this in-between, restrained and circumspect, where Rooney situates her novel — consider the title.
Intermezzo, an unexpected move in chess that interrupts the typical sequence of exchanges, is a risk that upends the game’s perceived balance, raising the stakes.
In the tense, messy contradictions of communal grief, Rooney weaves together beautiful whole cloth.
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This cover image released by FSG shows "Intermezzo" by Sally Rooney. (FSG via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are hanging near their records Tuesday after Chinese stocks soared following a slew of moves by the Chinese central bank to prop up the world’s second-largest economy.
The S&P 500 was 0.1% higher in early trading, a day after setting an all-time high for the 40th time this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 76 points, or 0.2%, and likewise coming off a record. The Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time.
Financial markets have been mostly ebullient after the Federal Reserve made a drastic turn last week in how it sets interest rates. It’s now lowering rate to make things easier for the U.S. economy after keeping them high for years in hopes of slowing the economy enough to extinguishing high inflation.
One of the risks still hanging over the market, though, is the struggling Chinese economy and how much its flagging growth may affect the rest of the world. After earlier delivering some modest and piecemeal moves, the chief of China’s central bank on Tuesday announced a broad set of changes to bolster its economy, including a reduction in the amount of reserves banks are required to keep.
Analysts called the coordinated moves encouraging, and they helped stocks soar in China. Indexes jumped 4.2% in Shanghai and 4.1% in Hong Kong. But questions still remain about how much they will boost the economy, which has been struggling since Chinese authorities cracked down ago on excessive borrowing by property developers.
Prices for oil and other commodities that a healthy Chinese economy would devour nevertheless climbed. A barrel of benchmark U.S. crude oil gained 2.2%. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 2.4%.
Copper climbed 3%.
On Wall Street, stock indexes were drifting in quiet trading in what may prove to be a relatively quiet week. A few reports on the economy are due, including an update on U.S. consumer confidence later Tuesday morning. But none will directly address what’s become the top concern among investors: the slowing U.S. job market.
Now that inflation has eased substantially from its peak two summers ago, the worry is that a slowdown in hiring by U.S. companies may worsen.
Moves to interest rates can take a notoriously long time to make their way fully through the economy, and the Federal Reserve had been keeping its main interest rate at a two-decade high for more than a year before last week. It did cut by an unusually large amount in hopes of providing relief to the job market and economy.
Reports due later this week include Thursday’s final revision on how much the U.S. economy grew in the spring. On Friday, a report will show how strong spending by U.S. consumers remains. That is the main engine of the U.S. economy.
Autozone’s stock fell 3.6% after saying a key measure of its sales performance among its U.S. stores barely grew during the latest quarter. It was part of an underwhelming report where its profit and revenue both fell short of analysts’ expectations.
The seller of auto replacement parts and accessories said its U.S. stores continue to see customers delay purchases of non-essentials.
Another company that depends on the appetite of U.S. shoppers for non-essentials, Thor Industries, was rising 1% following a mixed profit report. The maker of recreational vehicles reported better profit and revenue for the latest quarter, but it also gave a forecast for its upcoming fiscal year that sees the RV market continuing to be challenging.
“The talk of a softer market is beginning to sound like a broken record, but we remained focused on managing through it with increasing efficiency,” CEO Bob Martin said.
In the bond market, Treasury yields ticked higher. The 10-year yield rose to 3.78% from 3.75% late Monday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed’s upcoming moves, was holding steady at 3.59%, where it was late Monday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia. France’s CAC 40 jumped 1.3%, South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.1% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 0.6%.
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AP Writers Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott contributed.
The New York Stock Exchange is shown on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)
The flag of Argentina flies on the front of the New York Stock Exchange where Argentine President Javier Milei will ring the opening bell on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)
People walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
The Tokyo Stock Exchange building is seen Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
The Tokyo Stock Exchange building is seen Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing New York Dow, Japan's Nikkei indexes and U.S. dollar/Japanese yen exchange rate at a securities firm Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A person walks near an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A person looks at an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
