With Intermezzo, Sally Rooney's brand is bigger than ever

Having an advance review copy of Sally Rooney's latest book, Intermezzo, was a social media status symbol just a few months ago.

Now that it's finally out, the lauded Irish author's fourth novel is getting rave reviews. But is it her best yet?

Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud chats with journalist and book critic Michelle Cyca about why Sally Rooney is the literary It Girl of the moment.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: This is Sally's fourth novel, and it feels like she's been building a "brand" for herself for a minute. We know, sort of, what we're getting when we pick up a Sally Rooney novel. Talk to us about what a Sally Rooney book is.

Michelle: A Sally Rooney book is a very specific thing. It has a lot of really recognizable qualities. There's minimal plot. It's really about the characters, who are these very intelligent, often pretty sad and really hot, young Irish people.

And in every book, the characters are falling in love with someone who maybe doesn't seem like they're quite right for them. They're different in some ways, but they just have this magnetic attraction. And then the key feature of a Sally Rooney book is the characters have a lot of sex. There's some other themes that she gets into. There's some light Marxism. There's class resentment. There's people going for long walks in Dublin and, like, arguing and debating. Sally Rooney was a college debater — the best college debater when she was doing the sport. So people love to argue in her books.

Elamin: And now we got a new one…. You reviewed it. Tell me what you think of this novel.

Michelle: I mean, I liked it. I like all of her books. I think the reason Sally Rooney is so popular is she's an amazing writer. But I didn't think it was perfect.

Elamin: Some reviewers have said that, right? Some reviewers are like, "This is an utterly perfect book," which, listen, I understand the desire to elevate an author. But also, my God, "utterly perfect" is quite a thing to say about a book.

Michelle: It is. It feels like it's abdicating the role of critic a little bit. And I also just don't know that this is a totally perfect book. It's a really readable book. It's beautiful, like all of her books. It's the first book that's overly-focused specifically on the male perspective. She has male characters in her other books, but this one is about two brothers, so she's really inhabiting their consciousness. She does some different things with her technique in this one.

The book mostly alternates between the brothers' perspectives. One of them is drunk and on Xanax a lot, so his thoughts are very fragmented. She has a very experimental style there, which is interesting to read and I think it works really well for establishing very different tones in those sections. But because she returns to the same themes all the time — like, she's always expanding on her interest in relationships and love and morality — you start to notice things in her work, I think, that would be maybe less obvious if she wasn't such a consistent writer in her themes. And a big one in this book, if we can talk about sex this morning?

Elamin: Get into it.

Michelle: Everyone in this book is having, like, Hollywood sex. She's really praised for being a super realistic writer who writes very true-to-life dialogue, very authentic depictions of how millennials speak and talk and interact. But everyone in this book is having the kind of soft focus, instantly perfect sexual connection that you really only see in Hollywood movies, and it really stretches credibility at times in the book. One of the brothers' love interest is just this super hot 22-year-old sexpot who has no care in the world…. It's kind of like a manic pixie dream girl in a Sally Rooney book. That part didn't totally work for me.

Elamin: When we talk about Sally Rooney, I feel like a big part of the conversation is actually trying to dissect her success. Like, you see bookstores where they've just redone the window display to just be Intermezzo and no other book. There are Sally Rooney tote bags. The brand is strong. How does this writer become this successful, you think, Michelle?

Michelle: I mean, I think it's hard to do. That's why very few authors have done it. But I do think there's a key to Sally Rooney's success. This is my theory: her books are romances, which is an incredibly popular genre. They're definitely smart people romances. She's a very brilliant writer. She has this wonderful economy of style where all the sentences are super packed with meaning and sentiment and insight, but they flow really well…. Her skill is creating flow and creating these compelling arguments, and so you really get carried along when you're reading her books; they're super bingeable. And the characters in them, the premise of the romances in her books, I think, are the kinds you would see in a movie.

And there's the sexy element, that's very commercial. But because she's such a smart writer, I think her books work on multiple levels. You can read them if you want to read a really moving romance. You can read them for the little hints of philosophy and anti-capitalist critiques that she seeds in there. This isn't to sound like a hater — I think this is an incredible skill — but she's just writing smart people beach reads.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Michelle Cyca produced by Jean Kim.