Six Degrees of Separation ~ Intermezzo

Sally Rooney
Rooney, Sally "Intermezzo" - 2024

#6Degrees of Separation:

from Intermezzo (Goodreads) to East of Eden 

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here.

The starter book this month is Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. 

I still have Normal People (Goodreads) on my TBR pile. So, as usual, I didn't read the starter book. Therefore, here is the description.

"From the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Normal People, an exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family.

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."

I often use words in the title for my links. However, I don't have a book with the word "intermezzo" in the title. But, this is a book about two brothers. And I have read quite a few of them, so, this is what I chose. Books with siblings.

Guterson, David "The Other" - 2008
The story of the prince and the pauper, two boys with completely different backgrounds, John and Neil.

Konar, Affinity "Mischling" - 2016
The twins Pearl and Stasha, two Jewish girls, end up in Auschwitz and are brought into the "Zoo", the experiment chambers of Josef Mengele, also known as "The Angel of Death".

Lamb, Wally "I know this much is true" - 1998
This is a very moving book, wonderful and awful at the same time, about the twins Dominick and Thomas. It's incredible how much a person can bear if they have to.  

Setterfield, Diane "The Thirteenth Tale" - 2006
A gothic novel about an author and her biographer. They find they have something in common, they are both twins. Through Emmeline and Adeline, they find a lot of connections.

Smith, Zadie "White Teeth" - 1999
A great book with interesting plots, good descriptions, good language. It tells the story of different groups of immigrants to London in the seventies. Especially the next generation, for example the twins Millat and Magid show what they have to deal with.

Steinbeck, John "East of Eden" - 1952
This is the story of Cain and Abel retold, only here they are called Caleb and Aaron (the father is still Adam, though), and they live in his native California.

All the books have in common that they talk about siblings, mainly brothers.

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