the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little
in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently
unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep
and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his
enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long
joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself
as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early
weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her
own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period
of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold
inside itself without breaking.
REVIEWS
‘The literary phenomenon of the decade.’ Guardian on NORMAL PEOPLE
‘I love Sally Rooney. She has many imitators, but few equals.’ Zadie Smith
‘I can’t think of another writer who so perfectly captures the intensity and the pain
of both friendship and romantic love.’ Red