9 Of The Best Books Like Intermezzo By Sally Rooney

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“Yes, the world makes room for goodness and decency, he thinks: and the task of life is to show goodness to others, not to complain about their failings.”

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If you’ve just finished reading Intermezzo by Sally Rooney and are feeling a little emotionally raw, we’re here for you. Rooney’s trademark introspection, intimate dialogue, and quiet emotional weight help make her stories unforgettable, and Intermezzo is certainly no exception. But what do you read after something so soul-stirring? Today at What We Reading, we’re sharing our favourite books like Intermezzo, character-driven, emotionally complex novels that stay with you long after the final page. Whether you’re pulled to minimalist literary fiction, subtle explorations of grief and love, or contemporary novels with powerful emotional depth, these recommendations similar to Intermezzo guarantee to hit that same sweet spot. From authors like Rooney to fresh new voices in literary fiction, here are our top picks for what to read after Intermezzo. 

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Intermezzo Summary

Aside from being brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek appear to have nothing in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties. He is successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. Yet, in the wake of his 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 big joke. 

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always viewed himself as a socially awkward loner, the antithesis of his glib older brother. Now, in the early stages of bereavement, he meets an older woman named Margaret, and their lives soon become rapidly and intensely intertwined. Intermezzo is the story of these two brothers and the people they love on a journey to discover how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking. 

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Check Out Our Intermezzo Book Review

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Blue Sisters – Coco Mellors

Kicking off our list of books like Intermezzo is Coco Mellors’ bestseller, Blue Sisters. The three Blue sisters are exceptional, and all exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest, is a recovering addict turned strait-laced lawyer. Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles. Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris whilst trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the three of them reeling. 

A year on, as they all grapple with grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment where they were raised. But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood, they realise the biggest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves. 

Cleanness – Garth Greenwell

Sofia, Bulgaria. In the capital city of this landlocked state, Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protestors flood the streets with song, stirring the nation with hope and impending upheaval. 

It is against this backdrop that an American teacher navigates a life transformed by discovery and loss of love. As he prepared to leave the place he had come to call home, he wrestled with the intimate encounters that had defined his time abroad, each of them bearing uncanny reminders of his past. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to find connection. The follow-up to his much-acclaimed novel, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness is another exploration into foreignness, obligation, and desire, perfect for any fans of Intermezzo. 

Checkout 19 – Claire-Louise Bennett

In a working-class town in a county west of London, a schoolgirl scribbles stories in the back pages of her exercise book, intoxicated by the first sparks of her imagination. As she grows up, everything and everyone she encounters becomes fuel for a burning talent. The burly Russian man who careens around the grocery store where she works as a checkout clerk slips her a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. The growing piles of other books in which she loses – and finds – herself. 

The thrill of learning to conjure characters and scenarios in her head is coupled with the exhilaration of forging her own way in the world, the two kinds of ingenuity kindling to a brilliant configuration. Similar to Intermezzo, Claire-Louise Bennett’s Checkout 19 is a story of a young woman discovering her genius through unlocking the power of imagination.

Asymmetry – Lisa Halliday

Told in three distinctive and uniquely compelling parts, Asymmetry begins with the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her tumultuous relationship with the famous and much older writer, Ezra Blazer. The second story follows Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow airport. 

These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda. Lisa Halliday’s debut novel is an urgent, important, and truly original work that is guaranteed to strike a chord with anyone who loved Intermezzo. 

The Art Of Losing – Alice Zeniter

The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter explores identity, silence, and the weight of inherited trauma through three generations of an Algerian-French family. At the heart of the story is Naima, a young woman living in contemporary Paris, who realises she knows next to nothing about her family’s history, particularly her grandfather’s involvement in the Algerian War and the painful exile that followed.

Presented in spare, elegant prose and intimate, emotional detail, Zeniter unpacks the legacy of colonialism, loss, and disconnection across entire decades. Much like Intermezzo and other Sally Rooney stories, The Art of Losing lingers on quiet emotional truths, internal conflict, and the complexities involved with family and love. 

Very Cold People – Sarah Manguso

No one is watching Ruth. She, however, has become adept at watching everyone and everything. She doesn’t necessarily understand what she is seeing, but she records dutifully and with an absolute clarity the unfurling of her awkward youth, under even more awkward parenting. As they alternately mock, ignore, and discount their daughter, Ruth’s parents present now as damaged, now as inadequate, now as monstrous. All the while, the future comes towards them all. And the fog of the past and the abuses committed under it gather, swirl, settle, and intermittently clear. 

One of the best coming-of-age books like Intermezzo, Sarah Manguso’s Very Cold People is a haunting, interior depiction of growing up emotionally isolated in a style that any fans of Sally Rooney are sure to recognise. 

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Check Out The Best Authors Similar To Sally Rooney

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Trust Exercise – Susan Choi

In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle to thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall in love with one another, their passion does not go unnoticed, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley. 

A shocking spiral of events then catapults the action forward in time and flips the entire premise of Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise upside down. What the reader believes happened to David and Sarah, and their friends, isn’t entirely true, nor is it entirely untrue. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place, revealing truths that will linger long after the last page.  

Open Water – Caleb Azumah Nelson

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists, attempting to make a mark in a city that, by turn,s celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart on the back of fear and violence. 

At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson asks what it means to be a person in a world that only ever views you as a Black body. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, this book similar to Intermezz,o stands as one of the best portraits of learning to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, and to find safety in love, only to lose it. 

Exciting Times – Naomi Dolan

No list of books like Intermezzo would be complete without mentioning Exciting Times by Naomi Dolan, one of the go-to authors for anyone who loves Sally Rooney. Ava is a twenty-two-year-old tutor in Hong Kong, teaching English to affluent children. When she meets Julian, a cold but alluring banker, she begins a transactional relationship with him that soon blurs the lines between love, dependence, and control. 

However, when Julian leaves for London, Ava finds herself increasingly under the spell of Edith, a kind and confident lawyer. With Julian announcing his return, she is forced to confront the emotional messiness she’s been desperate to avoid. Similar to Rooney, Dolan’s writing is both sharp and witty, perfectly capturing the confusions that come packaged with growing up.