I still remember my first long run. I was 19, home from college, and it was one of those perfect summer days: bright and blue and not too humid. When I got to the end of the trail, my typical turnaround point, I decided, on a whim, to continue. I added one mile, then another, then another. By the time I returned to my parents’ house, I’d completed 10 miles. My whole system buzzed with adrenaline and endorphins. I felt like a god.
If this run lingers in my memory, it’s not only for the feeling of transcendence that accompanied it, but also for its innocence. I wasn’t straining to meet some mileage goal or pushing myself to run farther or faster than I wanted to. I was simply enjoying myself, seeing what my body could do. Purposeful runs came later. So did tempo runs and 20-milers, half marathons and marathons, tendinitis and amenorrhea, an unhealthy fixation on weekly mileage and an eating disorder just shy of clinical. But this first long run was pure pleasure, not least because I learned what it was like to locate a limit, then to push past it. It was intoxicating. I wanted to do it again.
The British pint is one of the largest standard servings in the world – bigger than those in Australia, Germany and the US. It has been that way since 1698, when a law was passed to prevent publicans from short-changing their customers with shorter measures. But now we know that more is not always better – especially in the case of alcohol. We might not be willing to give up drinking entirely, but certainly in Australia I was happy to settle for less.
While sadder and less of a page-turner than her three previous novels, Intermezzo is in many ways a more truthful book. As delicious as Rooney’s earlier love stories have been, they tend to conclude with a tidiness that defies reality. It’s very rarely the case that two people finally becoming a couple will solve most of their problems, and loss inevitably waits around each of life’s corners. Intermezzo is the work of an artist who is continually trying out new techniques and continually growing, but in a direction that might inspire fewer bucket hats, tote bags, and Netflix adaptations. Perhaps not all of her current fans will follow her there, but the ones who do won’t regret it.
What makes Rooney so electrically compelling is the way she sticks with a scene and draws it out, often just the delicate dance of talk between two people in a room (although not just talking, given the characters tumble into bed pretty much every 50 pages). Indeed, the greatest drama here comes from conversations taking place under the pressure of life-changing events in the novel’s prehistory. Not only the obviously big ones, like Sylvia’s accident, but also things like Ivan, still in his teens, silently walking away in fearful confusion when his brother, 10 years his elder, needed a shoulder to cry on. The reader always feels different layers of grief at play – buried pain exhumed by fresh hurt – in a way that rings stingingly true to life.