Number 19- Intermezzo- Sally Rooney

Prior to my book club choosing this book, I was dead set against reading anything by Sally Rooney- merely because her most famous book is called Normal People.  That is IMHO, possibly the most bland and uninteresting book title I have ever heard.  However, even I am willing to admit that that is a weak excuse to write an author off.

Now I've given this one a go and I'm happy to announce that I will never read a Sally Rooney novel again because I read half of this one and gave up.

I now have a good excuse for not wanting to read her.

This is told from alternating viewpoints of two brothers.  One is Peter, a 32 year old womanising solicitor, and the other is Ivan, is a 23 year old chess prodigy who barely knows how to talk to another human, let alone a woman.

Peter is still in love with his first long term girlfriend but is currently involved with a student in her early 20s. Ivan is desperate for anyone who'll look at him twice.

Ivan falls for Barbara, a woman in her late thirties/early forties, when he meets her at a chess display in a social club in the arse end of nowhere.  She's not a chess player, she's there to move the chairs and lock up.  She provides the third narrative voice of the book, doubling up in Ivan's chapters.

The chapters with Ivan and Barbara are ok to read but nothing special, and the sex scenes are cringe inducing. The biggest problem with the book is Peter's chapters.

Yoda it feels like they were written by. Object and subject of sentences transposed. Constantly. Sentences without verbs. Irritating as hell I found it. Boring his character is. Nothing he seems to have done by halfway through the book.

Ivan, although on the surface, the character that should be most sympathetic, the introvert being pulled out of his shell by his first real relationship, seems more of an incel and a complete stereotypical nerd, the further the book wears on. Barbara didn't seem to have much of a personality other than wondering what people would think of her shagging a guy half her age.

In the two hundred pages of this tedious and poorly written dross that I dragged myself through, I found zero of interest, and no characters worthy of sympathy. I had no compulsion to continue reading at the end of part one of the book.  When part two opened with the most Yoda speak so far, I gave up. 

At least I know my suspicions about her writing skills were on point.