Back in those days when librarians removed the jacket covers of newly acquired books, any book I picked from a shelf offered nothing to tease my interest other than the words themselves. I simply started reading. If I liked what I read, I took the book home. Why not, I now thought, present readers with a similar experience of mystery and discovery? But if my novel displayed none of the usual commercial trappings—not even a bar code, because I had no intention of selling it—how then would I reach readers?
My instinct while reading is to throw open a window, look at a painting, anything to allay the claustrophobia induced by being kept so close to people absorbed exclusively by their feelings, right now this moment, for each other. But art does its job when it pulls us beyond our instincts to experience other ways of being. Intermezzo is itself about life as continuous experiment. The novel suggests that Rooney (at Peter’s age, 33) won’t be settling in the shapes she has established, but holding us, with mixed joy and unease, in strenuous irresolution.
Rooney captures the fractious sibling dynamic and shows real empathy and insight into the impact of grief. It may not tap into the zeitgeist in the same way as Conversations with Friends and Normal People, but it is good to see Rooney’s universe expand in an emotional sense.
For Stoner, I felt a degree of respect and admiration fictional characters would seldom attain, but he would indeed reject such praise if I were able to share it with him. To all students who seek beauty in their daily readings, essays and seminars or those who long for the spark of curiosity for a class they once had, I have found the book for you.
Peter Godfrey-Smith does not use the word miracle in the title of his ambitious new book, “Living on Earth: Forest, Corals, Consciousness and the Making of the World,” but there is scarcely a page that does not recount one. His subject is the astounding creativity of life, not just to evolve ever-new forms, but to continually remake the planet that hosts it.