Intervals

What makes a good death? A good daughter? In 2009, with her forties and a wave of austerity on the horizon, Marianne Brooker’s mother was diagnosed with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis. She made a workshop of herself and her surroundings, combining creativity and activism in unlikely ways, but over time her ability to work, to move and to live without pain diminished drastically. In Intervals, Brooker charts her care for her mother, following her decision to refuse food and water in a bid to end her suffering. She turns to various sources – from Anne Boyer and Donald Winnicott, to Practical Magic and Coraline – to make sense of this experience and to explore the precarious space between proximity and complicity. Blending memoir, polemic and feminist philosophy, Intervals is a deeply moving work that harnesses the political potential of grief to raise essential questions about choice, interdependence and end-of-life care.