Intermezzo Ending Explained

⚠️ Major Spoiler Warning

This article reveals the final events of Intermezzo. If you haven't finished the novel, stop here.

A Direct Account of the Ending

The final chapter (Chapter 17) opens with Peter Koubek admitting that the unconventional solution Sylvia proposes—a three-way arrangement with Naomi—is not realistic. After a walk by the canal, Sylvia acknowledges her jealousy and cruelty, apologises, and suggests that the three of them “try an arrangement.” Peter is terrified and overwhelmed but cannot choose a conventional path.

Days later, Peter learns from his mother Christine that Ivan Koubek is on the verge of securing his second IM norm at a tournament in Clancy’s Hotel. Despite Ivan having blocked his number after a violent argument, Peter walks through the rainy December evening and waits outside the tournament room, watching the live game on his phone. Ivan secures the norm. When Margaret brings Ivan out, Peter and Ivan embrace. They apologise, confess mutual love, and Ivan invites Peter to Christmas in Kildare with him and Margaret. Peter accepts.

As Peter walks home alone, he reflects on the flawed but sustaining love he shares with Naomi, with Sylvia, and with his family. He chooses to “see what happens” and to “go on in any case living.” The novel closes not with an epilogue but with a standard author note, leaving the characters in a fragile, open-ended equilibrium.

The Climax

The emotional peak occurs in two interwoven moments: first, Peter’s confrontation with Sylvia at the canal, where the unspoken truth about their polyamorous reality is named aloud; second, the brothers’ reunion outside the chess tournament. Peter’s journey—from suicidal ideation on the train to sitting on a black sofa waiting to congratulate Ivan—mirrors the novel’s mental health and vulnerability theme. The climax is not a dramatic reversal but a quiet, tentative acceptance: Peter and Ivan finally stop hurting each other, and Peter stops hurting himself.

Major Character Outcomes

Peter Koubek

Peter remains caught between two women, but now with a conscious agreement rather than destructive secrecy. Sylvia proposes the arrangement, and Naomi cooks dinner at his home. He still feels immense guilt, yet he is no longer planning an exit. At the canal, he confesses his love for both women, and later, at the tournament, he tells Ivan “he loved me, and I love him,” speaking of their late father. He ends the novel walking home, forgiven and forgiving, determined to “do what little good he can with his life.” The suicidal despair that dominated the middle chapters has receded into a bereaved but living presence.

Ivan Koubek

Ivan achieves his second IM norm, a chess milestone that affirms his talent and discipline. His coming-of-age is marked by emotional maturity: he seeks out Margaret’s forgiveness after their argument about the age gap, and he initiates the reconciliation with Peter by inviting him for Christmas. He still lives with the grief for his father—evident in his sobbing call to Margaret after the fight—but he channels that pain into connection. Ivan’s relationship with Margaret endures; they exchange “I love you” and imagine a shared future, however uncertain.

Margaret

Margaret remains with Ivan despite social censure. She reflects on her “thankless and dutiful life” and finds the courage to embrace a relationship that scandalises the town. She tells herself “maybe it won’t last,” but also that “in ten years’ time, against the odds, they might look back and laugh.” Her arc resolves in a deceptively calm image: walking to the car, whistling, thinking about what film she and Ivan might watch that evening. She has let go of her old life’s constraints without letting go of connection. Her story echoes the novel’s complicated love theme.

Sylvia

Sylvia admits to Peter that she didn’t really want him to move on, that she created an impossible situation by telling him to do one thing while desiring another. Her admission—“I’ve been cruel”—releases both of them from the false narrative of heroic self-sacrifice. By proposing the arrangement, she chooses a vulnerable honesty over the safety of a clear ending. Her physical pain persists, but her emotional isolation fractures.

Naomi

Naomi remains Peter’s partner, openly aware of Sylva. She says “you’re in love with her” and accepts it. Her residence in Peter’s flat, the shared bath, and the domestic tenderness (she washes up, proudly) signal that she has moved from a transactional side relationship to a central figure in an unconventional family. Her past struggles with housing and money are not magically solved, but she is no longer alone.

Resolved and Unresolved Threads

Resolved

• Peter and Ivan’s estrangement: The brothers reconcile, ending the cycle of belittlement and violence that began with Peter mocking Ivan’s accent and later hitting him. They declare mutual love and commit to spending Christmas together.
• The love triangle’s secrecy: The arrangement, however tentative, replaces the lies. Sylvia’s proposal allows all three to acknowledge the shape of their reality.
• Ivan’s professional goal: He earns the second norm, bringing his IM title within reach.
• Peter’s immediate risk of suicide: He moves from “if it were all over” to a state of “defeated, relieved, forgiving everything.”

Unresolved

• Long-term viability of the arrangement: No promise is made. Peter says things like that “never work in real life,” and the novel ends without a neat resolution.
• Margaret and Ivan’s future: The age gap, family disapproval, and financial precariousness remain. Margaret’s final meditation acknowledges the possibility of future pain and embarrassment.
• Grief: The novel closes in the shadow of the father’s death. Peter still weeps at the thought of him. Christmas without their father looms. The grief is not healed but has become something they can carry together.
• Social and familial judgment: Margaret’s mother’s cruelty and Ricky’s scorn are mentioned but not faced. The brothers’ mother Christine knows little of the full picture.

Theme Resolution

The grief and loss theme finds its resolution not in forgetting but in shared mourning. Ivan’s question on the phone—“That won’t bring him back, will it?”—is met with Peter’s “No, it won’t,” and that honesty enables the embrace. Complicated love is reframed: the novel suggests that the only way to love several people at once is to abandon conventional naming, to accept that the existing vocabulary (“girlfriend,” “ex,” “friend”) cannot contain the truth. The Wittgenstein epigraph through the whole book asks about naming emotional states; the ending, with its “not in a conventional sense,” answers that language can be expanded only by living differently. Sibling estrangement is resolved through a simple act of showing up. Mental health and vulnerability pervade Peter’s arc: he chooses to live not because he is cured but because he can, for the moment, see what remains. Class and privilege are backgrounded but present: the house in Kildare, Peter’s legal career, Naomi’s precarious existence, and the unspoken cushion that allows these experiments.

Reasonable Interpretations

The ending is not triumphant. It is a fragile, held breath. One interpretation is that Rooney offers a quietly radical vision of kinship, where love is not a zero-sum game and the nuclear couple is not the only good life. Another reading is that the arrangement is a temporary compromise bound to collapse, and that the real closure lies in the brothers’ repair. A third is that the novel ends in a moment of grace after immense suffering, and that uncertainty itself is the point: life, like the intermezzo of the title, is a pause between movements, not a final chord. The author note at the end reinforces the separation between fiction and life, but also reminds us that the creator viewed these characters not as puzzles to solve but as people to sit with.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Ending

1. Do Peter, Sylvia, and Naomi end up in a polyamorous relationship?

Yes, in the sense that Sylvia explicitly proposes “some kind of arrangement” and Peter, though hesitant, does not reject it. He walks home to Naomi, visits Sylvia for dinner and physical intimacy, and the three are aware of one another’s roles. The narrative shows him moving between the two households, and the closing reflections on “her, the other” confirm a deliberate, if uneasy, shared life.

2. Does Ivan get his second IM norm?

Yes. Peter follows the live game on his phone while waiting in the hotel corridor. Ivan wins the critical game, securing the norm. This achievement is what brings Peter to the tournament, and the celebration that follows frames the brothers’ reunion.

3. Do Peter and Ivan reconcile?

They do. Peter waits outside the tournament room, and when Ivan emerges, they embrace. Ivan says “I love you too,” invites Peter for Christmas, and acknowledges that Peter’s presence “means a lot” to him. The blocked number, the bruised lip, the years of mutual resentment—all are set aside, if not erased.

4. What happens to Margaret at the end?

Margaret continues her relationship with Ivan. She returns to work after a night of lovemaking and deep conversation, and she thinks about introducing Ivan to her friends. She recognises that her life is fully exposed to judgment but that “nothing is left to be protected anymore.” Her final thought is one of defiant peace.

5. Does Peter overcome his suicidal thoughts?

He does not “overcome” them in a tidy sense. On the train he contemplates suicide with a “pure and clean” sense of relief. By the end, he is still exhausted and grieving, but he chooses to stay alive, “to do what little good he can.” The shift is from imagining death to tolerating life, and that is the novel’s definition of survival.

6. Is the ending meant to be happy?

The novel ends on a note of fragile hope rather than happiness. Peter describes being “defeated, relieved, forgiving everything.” The brothers are reunited, but their father is still dead. The love arrangement is unprecedented and may fail. Happiness is not the goal; continuing to love, despite the mess, is the goal. Rooney leaves the door open, not shut.