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.

Other Titles By Sally Rooney
CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS TRACK RECORD:
Over one million copies sold across all editions. A Sunday Times Top 100 novel of the twenty-first century. Winner of the Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year. Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. A Sunday Times, Observer, and Telegraph Book of the Year.
NORMAL PEOPLE TRACK RECORD:
Over three million copies sold across all editions. A number one Sunday Times and top five New York Times bestseller that was adapted into an Emmy-winning TV series. Winner of the Costa Novel Award, Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and both Novel of the Year and Book of the Year at the British Book Awards.
Shortlisted for the RSL Encore Prize and the TikTok Book Awards. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction.
BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU TRACK RECORD:
Over one million copies sold across all editions. A number one Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. Winner of Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Awards and of Best Fiction in the Goodreads Choice Awards. Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Award. A Times, Observer, Irish Times, Sunday Business Post, i News and Financial Times Book of the Year.