"An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney"-- - (Baker & Taylor)

In the wake of their father’s death, two brothers—successful Dublin lawyer Peter and his younger brother Ivan, a competitive chess player—find different ways to deal with their grief, which affects not only their lives, but the lives of those they hold dear. 500,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney. - (McMillan Palgrave)

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A National Indie Bestseller
Short-listed for the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year
Finalist for the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year

Named a Best Book of the Year and a Critics’ Pick by The New York Times
Named an Essential Read by The New Yorker
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, Financial Times, Vogue, The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, Vox, The Times (UK), Apple Books, and more
A USA Today, People, and Associated Press Top 10 Book of the Year

One of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2024
One of Chicago Public Library’s Favorite Books of the Year

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from 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.

Sally Rooney is an Irish novelist. She is the author of Beautiful World, Where Are You; Conversations with Friends; and Normal People. She also contributed to the writing and production of the Hulu/BBC television adaptation of Normal People. - (McMillan Palgrave)

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Brothers Peter and Ivan have just lost their father, the more devoted of their divorced parents. Ivan, 22, still in braces, meets the much-older Margaret at a chess event in which he was invited to play against all the members of a community chess club simultaneously, and won every game. Ivan is shy at first, and Margaret is nearly disgusted with herself for her attraction to him, but there's no denying their instant connection. A decade Ivan's senior, Peter, a self-medicating, bleeding-heart sort of Dublin lawyer, chides Ivan for falling for a woman who couldn't possibly be serious about him, thoughtlessly omitting from the discussion his own infatuation with Naomi, who's Ivan's age. This crisscross also brings in Sylvia, Peter's all-encompassing flame, practically a member of the family, who, following a terrible accident, can't fully be with him. Rooney's (Beautiful World, Where Are You, 2022) fourth novel might be her best yet: a tale of depth and grand sweep, an understated study of characters caught circling the margin of some great and unknown thing, and a diversion of pure enjoyment, too. Rooney's title tells us these brothers, in their love and fury for one another, are at an in-between moment, as she carefully, brilliantly writes them out of it.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Irish writer Rooney's U.S. following grows book by book, thanks, in part, to her earlier novels' TV adaptations. Copyright 2024 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

Best-selling Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You), who has had two novels adapted for TV, writes a story about love, family, and grief. Brothers Peter and Ivan have little in common, but both are dealing with the death of their father and managing relationships with the women in their lives. With a 500K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2024 Library Journal