Sally Rooney has done it again! I don’t know how she manages it, but she remains one of the few authors I’ve encountered who can seamlessly take the quiet, ordinary moments of life and make them feel luminous. Her stream‑of‑consciousness style is so natural that you barely notice you’re being carried along by it - you just look up and realize you’ve been completely absorbed.

In Intermezzo, we follow two brothers, Ivan and Peter, as they navigate the uneven, deeply personal terrain of grief after their father’s death. The early chapters gently guide you toward sympathy for Ivan, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that neither brother is perfect - and that’s part of what makes the novel feel so honest. Rooney understands that grief doesn’t transform us into better people; it simply exposes the parts of ourselves we’ve been avoiding.

One of the things I loved most is how the book explores the idea that siblings don’t necessarily grow up with the same parents. People change, parents change, and the versions of them we carry into adulthood can be wildly different. Rooney captures that beautifully, and it adds a quiet richness to the way each brother mourns.

Peter’s chapters are written in a fragmented style that many readers have complained about, but I found it incredibly fitting. His pov feels both tender and jarring, a reflection of someone who is lost, unmoored, and unsure of who he is anymore. The fractured structure mirrors that internal disorientation in a way that made me feel closer to him, even when the reading experience was intentionally uncomfortable.

I wouldn’t recommend Intermezzo to everyone. It’s slow, introspective, and entirely character‑driven. Normally, I wouldn’t even say it’s the kind of book I gravitate toward. But something about it just worked for me. It’s a soft, aching story about grief, identity, and the versions of ourselves we lose and find along the way.

*Audiobook rating is for the Swedish DAISY book that was recorded in 2015

This was my first time reading anything written by Tolkien and I can see why he is such an iconic and beloved author. I can clearly see how his writing have inspired other authors of this genre while also seeing similarities in the style of storytelling here with the "Iceberg" story telling method that was prominent in old Norse stories and Norse mythology, from which I know he took inspiration for the magic and world, but it seems the way they told stories might have inspired him too. Although he does make it more his own with adding more details where he wished.

It was fun and cozy, which I hadn't expected and all my complaints were things I was aware would be "problems" going in but that I still feel like could be worth mentioning:

Throughout the entire book there is only ever one woman mentioned by name (that I can recall) and that is Bilbo's mother, Belladonna, at the beginning of chapter one. But the lack of women in Tolkien's books was a known issue beforehand. Other smaller issue is the magic system, it doesn't actually bother me but I feel like it was worth mentioning that, once again, this is more like a story from mythology where magical things just happen with little to no explanation because the story calls for it, so if you are a reader who wants a magic system with clear strict rules you might end up frustrated by the magic in here.

Every here and there the story would end up feeling a bit choppy with longer periods of time having passed of the page and only being given a short synopsis, but that is one of the things that made me think of the "iceberg" story telling method and after making that connection it stopped bothering me, as it felt more like an homage to his inspiration.

Overall this was a very enjoyable book that I would recommend to others who like me still hadn't read it and where I can clearly both see what inspired this story and how it has inspired other stories as well.

Such a nuanced and necessary read that uses a strictly anti-capitalist, anti-state, and anti-carceral lens to examine sex and desire as a feminist issue. So so relevant to so many current conversations about feminism, especially choice feminism and how freedom doesn't necessarily equal liberation.

Especially, Srinivasan excels at dragging the conversation back from individual choice and recentering it on the deeper systems at play, refusing easy answers and simple binaries. In doing so, she drives the point home that sex and desire are political battlegrounds worthy of interrogation and critique.

Srinivasan tackles all areas of these political arenas with clarity and complexity. From porn to incels to dating and sexual preferences, to the complications of power in consensual sexual dynamics, and finally to sex work, Srinivasan leaves no stone unturned. The central argument is encapsulated in how she explores the idea of the right to sex: while nobody has a right to sex, desire is not a natural, apolitical essence that exists in a vacuum.

This nuance complicates the shallow sex-positive, liberal-choice feminist conversations that imply that consent and the freedom to choose are the one-stop solutions to the issue of sexual violence. Srinivasan does so without reducing the conversation to moralism, which also complicates the ideas pushed by second-wave and contemporary anti-sex feminists.

Her analysis forces us to ask: Why do we choose what we choose, and what would we choose if we had a real choice, unburdened by systems of oppression? By forcing the reader to face these questions, Srinivasan argues that the feminist movement has lost its bite in interrogating how desire has been manufactured, insulating the sexual sphere from critique in an understandable, but overcorrected, attempt to protect the right to choose and desire freely.

By participating in the exact interrogation that Srinivasan argues contemporary feminism lacks, she expands the personal into the political, examining how state power - especially capitalism, patriarchy and racism - manufactures, weaponizes, and exploits desire. This analysis allows the reader to move beyond individual choice and examine sex and desire as institutions alongside the systems that created them.

These arguments tie deeply into anti-carceral feminist thought. In every instance, Srinivasan asks whether feminism can or should fight misogyny with state-sanctioned legal and carceral measures. The answer remains in tension, but the takeaway is clear. Feminism should be wary of solutions that route liberation through power, even if these systems are "reformed" to adopt progressive language.

This anti-carceral framework is exemplified in her analysis of sex work and anti-prostitution narratives and how feminism rooted in the punishment of men turns people into symbols, losing the reality of harm and violence in the abstract. Srinivasan grounds her theory in a Marxist, leftist perspective that brings the focus back to material conditions and systemic deconstruction.

The Right to Sex is challenging in that it refuses the reader a comfortable place to land. There are so many brilliant takeaways here to bring forward into conversations about sex, desire, and consent. While well-read anti-carceral feminists might find the text introductory, it serves as a necessary bridge for those trying to move away from liberal feminism and an indispensable framework for feminists looking to apply anti-carceral, leftist logic to the personal sphere.