Intermezzo: The global #1 bestseller from the author of Normal People

Is it shame he feels, that hot blood pounding in his ears, or only embarrassment: the minor trifling embarrassment of an awkward situation or the true shame of a moral wrong. How is it possible to know. What can life be made to accommodate, what can one life hold inside itself without breaking.

Wanting too much. To love, to be loved.

She offered him friendship, a kind of friendship, yes, but he needed more. Or perhaps she offered him more, screened behind a veil of friendship, and he tore at that veil, foolishly, frantically, believing he could get to her.

A mother is not an endless thing.

A wild woman, her mother called her. A shocking piece of work. And so she is. Lord have mercy.

And then he’s outside, breathing the dirty air of Poolbeg Street, brackish odour of the quays.

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.

All good with you? Ivan feels inside himself a strong unwillingness to answer this question, a sudden and extreme attachment to his own silence. With effort, however, he replies: Yeah.

The same ritual he thinks each time. She tries to extract from him some valuably hurtful information and he tries to conceal from her any aspect of his life in which he suspects she might gain a foothold. Her fake innocuous queries and his studied evasions. Screens her calls whenever Naomi is home. Why does his mother even want to know: why does he