Intermezzo

Peter, a successful Dublin barrister, and Ivan, a reticent young chess prodigy, have never quite understood each other; their father's death forces them into proximity and into new, complicating loves. Rooney writes desire and negotiation with her familiar precision, but Intermezzo widens her range - the prose loosens and fragments in Peter's sections, drawing on modernist rhythms to render a mind under strain.

As ever she is interested in how tenderness survives inside relationships shadowed by money, age and self-doubt, and in the ethics of loving another person well. Readers who found her earlier novels cool may be surprised by the warmth here, the willingness to grant her characters grace.