Normal People actor to narrate new Sally Rooney novel Intermezzo (2024)

Normal People actor Éanna Hardwicke will narrate of the audiobook version of Sally Rooney's forthcoming novel, Intermezzo.

Intermezzo is the fourth book from the celebrated Irish writer, following 2017's Conversations with Friends, Normal People in 2018 and Beautiful World, Where Are You in 2021.

Normal People was arguably Rooney's biggest success with the TV adaptation of the much-loved novel starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal drawing in more than 60 million viewers, according to figures from the BBC.

The hit adaptation showcased a talented young cast - including Éanna Hardwicke, who is also Irish, as troubled Rob Hegarty.

Hardwicke, now 27, played the best friend of the central character Connell, who after struggling to adapt after leaving school tragically dies by suicide.

The actor, who has since starred in TV dramas Lakelands and The Sixth Commandment, said he is excited to take on the challenge of bringing Rooney's latest text to life.

'Her writing was a real gift to act, so it is a privilege to get to share in the Intermezzo story,' Hardwicke told The Hollywood Reporter.

Before adding: 'And to try and capture Sally's inimitable voice.'

Rooney's fourth book, set to be published in September, is about 'grief, love and family' and tells the story of two brothers named Peter and Ivan Koubek.

Hardwicke is a long-standing fan of Rooney's books, praising their emotional impact on readers.

'Sally has a beautiful way of bringing us into her character's hearts and minds,' he told The Hollywood Reporter.

Hardwicke has also previously opened up about how much of an impact his role in Normal People had on viewers.

'Normal People, like so many others, played a big part in my life, and I have been moved and transported by each of Sally's wonderful novels.

'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 so sceptical of something like that having a genuine impact.

'But I have been stopped on the street and told that the show has opened young people up in a way never before seen,' the actor told the Irish Independent.

'And I even spoke to a counselling service late last year, and they said they had seen an uptake as a direct result of the show. It's wild to think, 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 X (formerly Twitter) that read: 'Faber staff proofs (and pizza) have arrived.'

And it looks like some VIPs have also been able to get their hands on a copy before the rest of us, with Sally Rooney fanSarah Jessica Parker spotted walking in New York City with co-star Kristin Daviswith a copy in hand.

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 X (formerly Twitter) that read: 'Faber staff proofs (and pizza) have arrived.'

'This book. This book. I read it in one day. I hear I’m not alone,' SJP said of Conversations With Friends in an Instagram post.

The book tells the story of Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common - despite being brothers.

'Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties - successful, competent and apparently unassailable,' the description reads.

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.'

Self-described Marxist Rooney, 33, is heavily influenced by her own life experiences when creating her work.

Speaking about her own beliefs, she said: 'The way I see the world today is most through a Marxist framework.

And I'm never quite sure how to make that way of thinking sit alongside the fiction that I write. I don't know what it means to write a Marxist role.

'Even though that's the analytical structure that helps me to make sense of the world around me, I can't necessarily always accommodate that structure in the form of a novel.

'The one way that influences my work is that I write a lot about social class, but I don't think there's a straightforward way of doing that.'

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