I just finished the novel 'Intermezzo' by Sally Rooney. I am missing the characters already so I listened online to a few book club groups sharing their opinions, which were divided, as one would expect.
What did appear to be consistent was a liking of Margaret, the 36-year-old woman, recently divorced from her alcoholic husband who goes to bed with Ivan, the 23-year-old "on the spectrum" chess player who she has been assigned to drive home to his Airbnb from a tournament.
The two protagonists of the novel are Ivan and his brother Peter, but we get to know Margaret from the inside, and thus, it seems to me, readers relate to Margaret, and not to Naomi and Sylvia so much, because we come to understand Margaret better. There's so much about the other women that remains a mystery. It's missing the point by the way to expect to know them better because they are Peter's girls, and if Peter can't know them better, then neither can we. It's his confusion about the two women in his life, and how they fit, or don't, that is central to the story.
One book club member was lost as to a motive for Margaret having a relationship with the much younger Ivan. Ivan has braces, isn't that sure of himself, but there's something there; a wanting, a desire, and they are both kind, humble people. The sex scenes between them are so beautifully constructed that I would have thought there was no doubt in readers minds that this is irresistibility on both sides. And kindness, which they are both needing.
I think this is either a conscious or unconscious thought on Rooney's mind all the time - that what seems 'suitable' for some people isn't suitable for other people, and maybe these choices aren't even ours, but the conditioning of forces greater than ourselves. The reader leaves the book, I would have thought, wondering about the limitations we set on ourselves about what is suitable; even what 'love' looks like.
I think for many readers it will be a stretch to think that the two women could share Peter in an ongoing way, and that's probably right. Should Peter and Naomi settle down and have a child, the opportunities to see Sylvia may begin to run down, or not. She may be incorporated into the new family in ways, a loving aunt for the child perhaps. The two women genuinely care for one another, and for Peter, and that's the glue.
Monogamy has its place, of course, but what I don't think makes sense, is that it demands that we have no care for other people of the opposite sex. Jealousy has a purpose, to be sure, but it also has this nasty demand that all loving feelings should go to one person, forever.
Honestly, I think this unwritten expectation places demands on a union that are almost unachievable; that one person has to fulfil one's needs for passion, affection, understanding, companionship and so forth, forever and ever. It's sort of bottling oneself up, kind of living in fear of spreading good will around, lest one be judged.
I don't mean that Peter's decisions, and the girls, can be a regular sort of thing, suitable for the masses. It's a particular situation, but maybe not so particular. The times they are a changing.