Normal People actress Éanna Hardwicke will narrate the audiobook version of Sally Rooney’s upcoming novel Intermezzo.
Intermezzo is the fourth book by the celebrated Irish writer, following Conversations with Friends in 2017, Ordinary People in 2018 and A Beautiful World, Where Are You in 2021.
Normal People was arguably Rooney’s biggest hit with the television adaptation of the much-loved novel starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal attracting more than 60 million viewers, according to BBC figures.
The successful adaptation featured a young and talented cast, including Éanna Hardwicke, who is also Irish, as the troubled Rob Hegarty.
Hardwicke, now 27, played the best friend of central character Connell, who after struggling to fit in after leaving school tragically dies by suicide.
Éanna Hardwicke (right), now 27, played troubled Rob Hegarty in Normal People alongside Paul Mescal (left)
Hardwicke played the best friend of central character Connell (right), who after struggling to fit in after leaving school, tragically dies by suicide.
Intermezzo is the fourth book by the celebrated Irish writer, following Conversations with Friends in 2017, Ordinary People in 2018 and A Beautiful World, Where Are You in 2021.
The actor, who has since starred in TV series Lakelands and The Sixth Commandment, said he was excited to take on the challenge of bringing Rooney’s final text to life.
“His writing was a true gift to acting, so it’s a privilege to be able to share Intermezzo’s story,” Hardwicke said. The Hollywood Reporter.
Before adding: “And to try and capture Sally’s inimitable voice.”
Rooney’s fourth book, due out in September, is about “grief, love and family” and tells the story of two brothers named Peter and Ivan Koubek.
Hardwicke is a long-time fan of Rooney’s books and praises their emotional impact on readers.
“Sally has a beautiful way of taking us into the hearts and minds of her characters,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Hardwicke also previously spoke about the huge impact her role in Normal People had on viewers.
‘Ordinary people, like so many others, played an important role in my life, and each of Sally’s wonderful novels has moved and transported me.
Rooney, a self-described Marxist, 33, is heavily influenced by her own life experiences when creating her work.
Sally Rooney fan Sarah Jessica Parker was seen walking in New York City with her co-star Kristin Davis with a copy of Intermezzo in hand.
“They do what great stories do: make you laugh, make you cry, and hopefully see the world a little more vividly afterward.”
“I’m also always very skeptical that something like this will have a genuine impact.
“But they stopped me in the street and told me that the show had opened up young people in a way they had never seen before,” the actor told the Irish Independent.
“I even spoke to a counselling service last year and they said they had noticed an increase in uptake as a direct result of the programme. It’s incredible to think about, isn’t it?”
While most people will have to wait until September to get their hands on a copy, publisher Faber recently teased the book’s release with a post on (and the pizza).”
And it looks like some VIPs were also able to get their hands on a copy before the rest of us, as Sally Rooney fan Sarah Jessica Parker was spotted walking around New York City with her co-star Kristin Davis with a copy in hand .
While most people will have to wait until September to get their hands on a copy, publisher Faber recently announced the book’s release with a post on pizza) have arrived”.
“This book. This book. I read it in one day. I heard I’m not the only one,” SJP said of Conversations with Friends in an Instagram post.
The book tells the story of Peter and Ivan Koubek who seem to have little in common – despite being brothers.
“Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties: successful, competent and seemingly impregnable,” the description reads.
But after his father’s death, he takes sleeping medication and struggles to manage his relationships with two very different women: his first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
‘Iván is a twenty-two year old competitive chess player.
‘He has always considered himself socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his loquacious older brother.
‘Now, in the first weeks of his grief, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become quickly and intensely intertwined.
“For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude, a period of desire, desperation and possibility, a chance to discover how much a life can hold within itself without breaking apart.”
Rooney, 33, who describes herself as a Marxist, is heavily influenced by her own life experiences when creating her work.
Speaking about his own beliefs, he said: ‘The way I see the world today is primarily through a Marxist framework.
And I’m never quite sure how to make that way of thinking fit with the fiction I write. I don’t know what it means to write a Marxist paper.
‘Although that is the analytical structure that helps me make sense of the world around me, I can’t always fit that structure into novel form.
‘The only way this influences my work is that I write a lot about social class, but I don’t think there’s an easy way to do that.’
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