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Intervals
What makes a good death? A good daughter? In 2009, with her forties and a harsh 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 inventive ways. But over time, her ability to work, to move and to live without pain diminished drastically. Determined to die in her own home, on her own terms, she stopped eating and drinking in 2019. In Intervals, Brooker reckons with heartbreak, weaving her first and final memories with a study of doulas, living wills and the precarious economics of social, hospice and funeral care. Blending memoir, polemic and feminist philosophy, Brooker joins writers such as Anne Boyer, Maggie Nelson, Donald Winnicott and Lola Olufemi to raise essential questions about choice and interdependence and, ultimately, to imagine care otherwise.
170 pages, Paperback
Published February 28, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
March 1, 2025
This beautiful, insightful book - set during the weeks leading up to and during the voluntary refusal of food and drink by the author's mother - deals with questions of choosing death, daughterhood, and the literature of illness. I loved it.
September 14, 2025
Marianne Brooker'ın Eşikler isimli anı-deneme eserini okumak çok acı olduğunu bildiğiniz bir biberi yemek, altından su çıkacağını bildiğiniz kırık bir kaldırım taşına basmak gibi...Bile bile lades. Üzüleceğimi, zorlanacağımı bile bile başlayıp bitirdim ben de.
Yazarın annesine kırklı yaşlarının başında MS teşhisi konuyor. Hastalığın şiddeti gittikçe artıp dayanılmaz bir hal alınca, yazarın annesi (kitap boyunca isimler hiç geçmiyor) yaşamına son vermeye karar veriyor. Bunu da yeme ve içmeyi, tedaviyi redderek yapıyor. Brooker, Birleşik Krallık'ta yasalar gereğince iyi bir ölümün mümkün olup olmadığını araştırma ve edebi metinleri kaynak göstererek sorgularken, evlat olma durumunu, anne-kız ilişkisini de tüm çıplaklığı ile masaya yatırıyor. Tahmin edilebileceği gibi zor ve iç karartan bir metin bu. Yer yer ben mazoşist miyim, neden okuyorum bu metni diye sorguladığımı itiraf etmeliyim. Herkesin adil ve huzurlu bir ölümü hak ettiğini, evlat olmanın, çaresiz olmanın ne denli zor olduğunu çok gerçek bir şekilde anlatan bir metin bu. Sağlık hizmetlerinin yetersizliği ve bu hizmetlerin erişilebilirliği gibi siyasi meselelere feminist bir perspektiften bakan bir metin de aynı zamanda. Herkese göre olmayan o iyi kitaplardan biri Eşikler.
Yazarın annesine kırklı yaşlarının başında MS teşhisi konuyor. Hastalığın şiddeti gittikçe artıp dayanılmaz bir hal alınca, yazarın annesi (kitap boyunca isimler hiç geçmiyor) yaşamına son vermeye karar veriyor. Bunu da yeme ve içmeyi, tedaviyi redderek yapıyor. Brooker, Birleşik Krallık'ta yasalar gereğince iyi bir ölümün mümkün olup olmadığını araştırma ve edebi metinleri kaynak göstererek sorgularken, evlat olma durumunu, anne-kız ilişkisini de tüm çıplaklığı ile masaya yatırıyor. Tahmin edilebileceği gibi zor ve iç karartan bir metin bu. Yer yer ben mazoşist miyim, neden okuyorum bu metni diye sorguladığımı itiraf etmeliyim. Herkesin adil ve huzurlu bir ölümü hak ettiğini, evlat olmanın, çaresiz olmanın ne denli zor olduğunu çok gerçek bir şekilde anlatan bir metin bu. Sağlık hizmetlerinin yetersizliği ve bu hizmetlerin erişilebilirliği gibi siyasi meselelere feminist bir perspektiften bakan bir metin de aynı zamanda. Herkese göre olmayan o iyi kitaplardan biri Eşikler.
August 17, 2024
i have no idea where to start with this book.
assisted suicide is a topic that’s always intrigued me. as soon as i read the blurb for this my interest was piqued.
intervals is a collection of essays following marianne brooker’s mother’s decision to VSED (voluntarily stopping eating and drinking) due to suffering from multiple sclerosis for a decade. this collection intricately weaves brooker and her mother’s experience with VSED with the UK laws regarding assisted suicide, statistics on the cost of living while being ill and disabled, and other personal accounts of what’s it’s like to be a caregiver. brooker digs into how expensive it is to both live and die—especially for ill and disabled people. assisted suicide being illegal in the uk makes it difficult and costly for those seeking it. traveling to another country is simply not an option for many low-middle class families.
brooker’s love for her mother is palpable. in recalling stories and quirks about her mother i almost felt that i knew this woman myself. mother/daughter relationships might just be my very favorite relationships to read about. as a daughter with a mother, i know that it truly is a unique bond with countless complexities. her writing is absolutely mesmerizing—especially when she discusses her grief after her mother has passed. so many gorgeous lines in this book made me want to run to my mother like a child again. this book is a warm hug, a punch in the heart, and a breath of fresh air all bundled into one masterpiece.
tl;dr: heartbreakingly beautiful story of a daughter caring for her mother in her final days and dealing with grief after losing her. bring tissues for this one.
(thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!)
assisted suicide is a topic that’s always intrigued me. as soon as i read the blurb for this my interest was piqued.
intervals is a collection of essays following marianne brooker’s mother’s decision to VSED (voluntarily stopping eating and drinking) due to suffering from multiple sclerosis for a decade. this collection intricately weaves brooker and her mother’s experience with VSED with the UK laws regarding assisted suicide, statistics on the cost of living while being ill and disabled, and other personal accounts of what’s it’s like to be a caregiver. brooker digs into how expensive it is to both live and die—especially for ill and disabled people. assisted suicide being illegal in the uk makes it difficult and costly for those seeking it. traveling to another country is simply not an option for many low-middle class families.
brooker’s love for her mother is palpable. in recalling stories and quirks about her mother i almost felt that i knew this woman myself. mother/daughter relationships might just be my very favorite relationships to read about. as a daughter with a mother, i know that it truly is a unique bond with countless complexities. her writing is absolutely mesmerizing—especially when she discusses her grief after her mother has passed. so many gorgeous lines in this book made me want to run to my mother like a child again. this book is a warm hug, a punch in the heart, and a breath of fresh air all bundled into one masterpiece.
tl;dr: heartbreakingly beautiful story of a daughter caring for her mother in her final days and dealing with grief after losing her. bring tissues for this one.
(thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!)
March 23, 2024
Longlisted for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. The three nominees I’ve read so far are based around a personal narrative, although also political, and incorporate research and cultural critique. Brooker’s is an extended essay about her mother’s protracted death with multiple sclerosis and the issues it brought up around disability, poverty, and inequality of access to medical care and services. Specifically, Brooker decries the injustice of the wealthy having the option of travelling to Dignitas in Switzerland for an assisted death (current cost: £15,000), whereas her single mother, who lived in rented accommodation and had long been disabled and unable to work, apart from crafting and reading tarot, had so such relief in sight. Instead, she resorted to refusing life-sustaining nourishment.
Brooker’s description of the vigil of these last days, like her account of her vivacious mother’s life, is both tender and unflinching. It’s almost like a counterpoint to Simone de Beauvoir’s A Very Easy Death, but with the same incisive attention and emotional transfer between mother and daughter. The book also incorporates political commentary and quotations from psychologists and cultural critics. This somewhat distances the reader; it feels less like a bereavement memoir and more like an impassioned, personally inspired treatise. But that’s not to say there isn’t some levity. She remembers good times from their earlier life together, and reckons with her new role as her mother’s memorial and archivist in a way that really rang true for me. I wish the title was more evocative so as to draw the right readers to this book.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Denied a liveable life and a legal right to die, my mum made a choice within and between the lines of the law. A decade after her diagnosis, when she was forty-nine and I was twenty-six, she decided to stop eating and drinking to end her suffering and her life. Her MS symptoms were barely treatable and certainly incurable: severe pain, incontinence, fatigue, the gradual but intensifying loss of mobility, vision and speech. But these medical symptoms were compounded by social conditions: isolation, stress, debt and fear of a future in which she would not be able to live or die in her chosen home. We were caught in a perfect storm.
Brooker’s description of the vigil of these last days, like her account of her vivacious mother’s life, is both tender and unflinching. It’s almost like a counterpoint to Simone de Beauvoir’s A Very Easy Death, but with the same incisive attention and emotional transfer between mother and daughter. The book also incorporates political commentary and quotations from psychologists and cultural critics. This somewhat distances the reader; it feels less like a bereavement memoir and more like an impassioned, personally inspired treatise. But that’s not to say there isn’t some levity. She remembers good times from their earlier life together, and reckons with her new role as her mother’s memorial and archivist in a way that really rang true for me. I wish the title was more evocative so as to draw the right readers to this book.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
September 4, 2025
içten bir anneye veda yazısı ve satır aralarında engelli, hasta, yaşlı insanların bakımı, palyatif bakım ve ötenazi üzerine gerçekçi fikirler, bir hastalığı, bir anneyi, bir kız evladın kalbini gösteriyor ve bunları aşama aşama bakım olgusundaki eksikliklere, devletin ne kadar katılması ve neler yapması gerektiğine bağlıyor...
January 30, 2025
Ooohhh this is the perfect book. Right up my alley. Brooker tells the story of her mom who decides to stop eating and drinking, because her body and our society are failing her. Her mothers defiance is both amazing and heartbreaking, for its necessity. Favourite quotes:
'If an intervention describes the act of stepping in - to save a life, or gasten a death - an interval describes the intimate work of stepping backmaking space and marking time.'
'Society makes a burden of our most basic needs'
And after thinking she was dying, but only had an accident
'Scrubbing the carpet was the easiest thing in the world.'
More quotes I forgot to write down. I will probably be reading this again anyway.
'If an intervention describes the act of stepping in - to save a life, or gasten a death - an interval describes the intimate work of stepping backmaking space and marking time.'
'Society makes a burden of our most basic needs'
And after thinking she was dying, but only had an accident
'Scrubbing the carpet was the easiest thing in the world.'
More quotes I forgot to write down. I will probably be reading this again anyway.
August 4, 2025
İyi bir ölüm ne demektir? Nasıl iyi bir evlat olunur?.. 2009 yılında, sert bir kemer sıkma politikası ufukta beklerken, kitabın yazarı Marianne Brooker’ın kırk yaşlarındaki annesine ağır bir hastalık teşhisi konur" der arka kapak yazısı. Buradan sonrası anlatı başlar... Bu süreçte izlenen prosedürlerden çok, arada ki bağ, yaşanmak istenen ile yaşanamayan, yarım kalan hikâye.... Biraz iç burkan bir kitaptı... İçinde bol bol evde bakilan hastalar için izlenen yollara dair bilgilerde vardı. Ama en çok ikili diyologlar ya da tekli anlatımlar duygusal olarak zorluyordu.... Hele ki bir hastalık sonucu annemi kaybetmiş biri olarak, empati ve sempati duygum çok yoğundu. #eşikler
August 10, 2025
Okuması kolay ama konu olarak zor kitap. İçinde tetikleyici ögeler var. MS hastalığına yakalanan annesinin artık mücadele etmekten yorulup yemeyi içmeyi bırakarak hayatına son vermek istemesi kararı üzerine bir kitap. Kitaba adını da veren çeşitli eşikler olduğundan söz ediliyor hayatta. Benim hayat bakış açıma ters olan fikirleri baz alsa da onları savunuş şekli nedeniyle gerçeklik unsurunu bana geçirdi. Türü roman değil anı zaten, gerçek bir hikayeye dayanıyor.
March 24, 2025
Essential reading on illness and death.
Brooker thoroughly distils the experience of losing her mum, who suffered from the symptoms of MS and decided to end her life via VSED (Voluntary stopping eating and drinking). From the point of diagnosis to organising the funeral to what comes after, to campaigning for assisted suicide and writing this book.
Intervals is a testament to the flawed illegality of assisted suicide, the tribulations of existence without accessible financial aid, and an integral part of a campaign to treat those with life challenging disabilities and illnesses with compassion and care.
Brooker thoroughly distils the experience of losing her mum, who suffered from the symptoms of MS and decided to end her life via VSED (Voluntary stopping eating and drinking). From the point of diagnosis to organising the funeral to what comes after, to campaigning for assisted suicide and writing this book.
Intervals is a testament to the flawed illegality of assisted suicide, the tribulations of existence without accessible financial aid, and an integral part of a campaign to treat those with life challenging disabilities and illnesses with compassion and care.
August 31, 2024
'Sometimes I look around and see, with surprise, that the world is finally clean, only to find it filthy a moment later.'
a well-written memoir on living, dying, grieving, care and caring, austerity and dignity. carefully contemplating the politics of death and how its’ injustices float around us all.
a well-written memoir on living, dying, grieving, care and caring, austerity and dignity. carefully contemplating the politics of death and how its’ injustices float around us all.
March 4, 2024
Not a book it's easy to review given the personal lens through which the subject is seen. A book like 'Intervals' reminds us that GoodReads, with its star-ratings and idiosyncratic reviewer-by-reviewer value systems, is not for all good reads. However.
When Brooker was still in her late teens, her mother - only in her late thirties herself - was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. As the austerity state further attacked an already underfunded social care system, she felt her life contained more pain than it was worth, and decided, after a decade, to starve herself to death.
It would be patronising here to praise Brooker's clarity and restraint in how she writes about her mum's decision, what led to it, and the personal consequences of that experience for Brooker herself; I personally think Brooker is entitled to a huge amount of rage, and it's a typically English critique to praise someone - or a book in this case - for behaving well in difficult conditions. Still, that's what Brooker does, writing with uncrowded intimacy and incredible emotional and philosophical maturity about the weeks it took her mother to die, and the context (personal, social, political and historical) in which this happened. You come to really feel that you know Brooker and her mum, who she writes with such care and complexity, as if she's laying down a series of images and photographs that allow you to see her many sides, so her contradictions make her real rather than confusing. (In this, it reminded me of Hisham Matar's 'The Return', which has a similarly 'exploded' view of the writer's father and a non-chronological portrait of their father-son relationship.)
Amongst this, however, there's the occasional feeling that Brooker has almost taken on too much. 'Intervals' is at times autotheory, at times straightforward memoir, and at times flatly journalistic polemic on the underfunding of state healthcare for those experiencing chronic pain and/or disablement. But rather than blending these into one voice, 'Intervals' sort of shifts gears into and out of them, switching tone and register mid-paragraph, and while there's a lot here that's illuminating and moving, there's also an unevenness to the prose. The journalistic material especially - the facts and figures of the unregulated funerals market, statistics about medication costs in America and the UK, quotes about the consequences of the right to die being brought into British state law - sometimes tripped me up as a reader. (Brooker reveals eventually that she spoke to a Westminster MP as part of a campaign group, and I wondered if she'd incorporated that material here without letting it settle more naturally into the book.) In one early scene we see Brooker making a T-shirt for her mum with her Sisters Uncut group as part of an anti-austerity demo, blending details of MS with personal reminiscence and the consequence of neoliberal state underfunding, and I wanted more moments like this, where her three strands came together more organically and the information felt truly 'lived'. At the midway point, for example, we're told of a "kind, camp Irishman" who visits her mum as a care specialist, but he disappears right after he's introduced, replaced by summaries of a UNISON report and pay disparity in hospice charities. The two elements feel oddly separate on the page, and the man becomes a sort of prologue to the material, rather than the figure whose existence inevitably gives rise to this issue in Brooker's mother's life.
My other issue isn't really Brooker's fault: she has a sister, who we're eventually told asked to be removed from the narrative. But until that confirmation, it gives the narrative a haunted, unnerving edge. Brooker remembers being six and her mum going into labour, and the scary experience of the birth not going according to plan; elsewhere, we're told of her mum's remarriage, though this second husband never appears again. The evasiveness around this left me wondering if the baby had died at birth, or if the sister had left with the father, and why we weren't hearing more about that; and where was she during those last weeks? I was glad of the explanation near the book's conclusion - though exactly what happened with the second husband, unless I missed a reference, remains absent.
Overall the strengths of 'Intervals' win out, and for me its most powerful section was Brooker's wholly personal writing on the last days of her mum's life, where statistics and theory disappeared. This isn't to say Brooker isn't good at the theory: her reading is steeped in it, with quotations from Maggie Nelson, Anne Boyer, Nuar Alsadir, Saidiya Hartman, Kate Briggs, Sara Ahmed and more, and I did admire how she selected lines and phrases, keeping the narrative moving with a strong sense of purpose and momentum. 'Intervals' is already longlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, and though there's plenty on that longlist I haven't read, I fully expect this to win a place on the shortlist.
When Brooker was still in her late teens, her mother - only in her late thirties herself - was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. As the austerity state further attacked an already underfunded social care system, she felt her life contained more pain than it was worth, and decided, after a decade, to starve herself to death.
It would be patronising here to praise Brooker's clarity and restraint in how she writes about her mum's decision, what led to it, and the personal consequences of that experience for Brooker herself; I personally think Brooker is entitled to a huge amount of rage, and it's a typically English critique to praise someone - or a book in this case - for behaving well in difficult conditions. Still, that's what Brooker does, writing with uncrowded intimacy and incredible emotional and philosophical maturity about the weeks it took her mother to die, and the context (personal, social, political and historical) in which this happened. You come to really feel that you know Brooker and her mum, who she writes with such care and complexity, as if she's laying down a series of images and photographs that allow you to see her many sides, so her contradictions make her real rather than confusing. (In this, it reminded me of Hisham Matar's 'The Return', which has a similarly 'exploded' view of the writer's father and a non-chronological portrait of their father-son relationship.)
Amongst this, however, there's the occasional feeling that Brooker has almost taken on too much. 'Intervals' is at times autotheory, at times straightforward memoir, and at times flatly journalistic polemic on the underfunding of state healthcare for those experiencing chronic pain and/or disablement. But rather than blending these into one voice, 'Intervals' sort of shifts gears into and out of them, switching tone and register mid-paragraph, and while there's a lot here that's illuminating and moving, there's also an unevenness to the prose. The journalistic material especially - the facts and figures of the unregulated funerals market, statistics about medication costs in America and the UK, quotes about the consequences of the right to die being brought into British state law - sometimes tripped me up as a reader. (Brooker reveals eventually that she spoke to a Westminster MP as part of a campaign group, and I wondered if she'd incorporated that material here without letting it settle more naturally into the book.) In one early scene we see Brooker making a T-shirt for her mum with her Sisters Uncut group as part of an anti-austerity demo, blending details of MS with personal reminiscence and the consequence of neoliberal state underfunding, and I wanted more moments like this, where her three strands came together more organically and the information felt truly 'lived'. At the midway point, for example, we're told of a "kind, camp Irishman" who visits her mum as a care specialist, but he disappears right after he's introduced, replaced by summaries of a UNISON report and pay disparity in hospice charities. The two elements feel oddly separate on the page, and the man becomes a sort of prologue to the material, rather than the figure whose existence inevitably gives rise to this issue in Brooker's mother's life.
My other issue isn't really Brooker's fault: she has a sister, who we're eventually told asked to be removed from the narrative. But until that confirmation, it gives the narrative a haunted, unnerving edge. Brooker remembers being six and her mum going into labour, and the scary experience of the birth not going according to plan; elsewhere, we're told of her mum's remarriage, though this second husband never appears again. The evasiveness around this left me wondering if the baby had died at birth, or if the sister had left with the father, and why we weren't hearing more about that; and where was she during those last weeks? I was glad of the explanation near the book's conclusion - though exactly what happened with the second husband, unless I missed a reference, remains absent.
Overall the strengths of 'Intervals' win out, and for me its most powerful section was Brooker's wholly personal writing on the last days of her mum's life, where statistics and theory disappeared. This isn't to say Brooker isn't good at the theory: her reading is steeped in it, with quotations from Maggie Nelson, Anne Boyer, Nuar Alsadir, Saidiya Hartman, Kate Briggs, Sara Ahmed and more, and I did admire how she selected lines and phrases, keeping the narrative moving with a strong sense of purpose and momentum. 'Intervals' is already longlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, and though there's plenty on that longlist I haven't read, I fully expect this to win a place on the shortlist.
November 5, 2024
Found this a really difficult book to read. The author's mother has MS and decides to do VSED, voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, it not only deals with the debate of assisted dying but discusses a myriad of issues. Written by an academic, it is not surprising that there are numerous sources referenced, yet these are not just medical but death in literature, etc. What I will say is you need to be in the right headspace for it, and I'm definitely going to read something lighter next! Overall though a very insightful read.
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May 10, 2025I appreciated the nuanced discussion of care, disability, assisted dying, and all the systems working against us, told through a personal lens. really insightful and I’m glad the author shared her (& her mother’s) story.
my one gripe is that I really couldn’t stand all the quotes dropped into the text with zero context/footnotes. maybe an editing issue but it felt like she was just trying to force all of her research into the text just so that we knew she did it. it disrupted the flow! but still a worthwhile read if you’re interested in the above topics
my one gripe is that I really couldn’t stand all the quotes dropped into the text with zero context/footnotes. maybe an editing issue but it felt like she was just trying to force all of her research into the text just so that we knew she did it. it disrupted the flow! but still a worthwhile read if you’re interested in the above topics
February 17, 2024
Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy to review.
This book found me at the exact time that I needed it. More cohesive thoughts to follow as I process what I just read.
This book found me at the exact time that I needed it. More cohesive thoughts to follow as I process what I just read.
December 10, 2025
Yakın zamanda yaşadığım ani bir kaybın ardından son iki aydır kayıpla, yasla yaşayan kişilerle ilgili kurmaca veya kurmaca dışı kitaplara aşırı yöneldim. Bahçıvan Ve Ölüm, Tüylü Bir Kuştur Şu Yaş, Kayıp ve Keşif gibi. İçlerinde beni en çok delip geçen kitap Eşikler oldu. Biraz toparlayayim kendimi, yorumu düzenleyeceğim.
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December 28, 2025much of this book is a very thoughtfully composed + researched essay advocating for access to compassionate end of life care for patients with progressive, debilitating, and terminal illnesses. brooker’s mom is one such patient, and because assisted dying is illegal in the UK, she ultimately opts for VSED (voluntarily stopping eating and drinking) despite initial concerns regarding discomfort and pain. spliced between the essay is a very affecting personal narrative chronicling all the daily joys and agonies brooker experiences while caring for her mom. there is also a fundamental question which scaffolds this narrative, serving as theme and throughline: what does it mean to love someone knowing they will die (and in this most painful of situations, that they have chosen to because the alternative is unimaginable physical suffering)?
“In [Sarah] Ahmed’s words: ‘I must act about that which I cannot know, rather act insofar as I know. I am moved by what does not belong to me.’ My mum’s pain couldn’t be mine. I couldn’t learn it from books; I couldn’t catch it from touch. But still it moved me, and moved in this way, I could learn begin to accept her choice.”
On psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott’s work: “Winnicott refuses to either idealize or condemn motherhood. For him, the mother figure simply does her best, knowing that she can only be ‘good enough,’ her devotion definitively ordinary… Through the mother’s small failures and short absences, her soft-headed, wild-mouthed child begins to trust that she’ll return and gradually comes to understand that they are separate yet interrelated beings. This interdependence maps onto care at the end of life as well as its beginning, prompting me to wonder: what is a good enough daughter; what is a good enough death?”
“Daughter-love, as I felt it, was a slippery thing: selfish, selfless; wounded, brave; bored, transfixed. I wanted to unburden my mum, but I also wanted to pull her close and take shelter, to insist on the wide arch of her rainbow, her duty and constancy.”
-
a personal note: i’ve been thinking about a less acute variation of the question above for some time, namely how best to love & care for aging family members while respecting their agency and dignity. i found intervals to be quietly cathartic in its acknowledgement of how much a fkfest of feelings this process can involve—it almost always involves tension between the carer (who wants their loved ones to be careful, take care, protect themselves so they can live longer and be at our side for longer) and the recipient of this care (who sometimes will reject or forego this love if the tradeoff is less autonomy). this tension is one of those dull aches of life that will dog you well into adulthood as you watch your loved ones grow older. my perspective on it (dec 2025) is that the carer will nearly always be the one to concede. it’s only right.
“In [Sarah] Ahmed’s words: ‘I must act about that which I cannot know, rather act insofar as I know. I am moved by what does not belong to me.’ My mum’s pain couldn’t be mine. I couldn’t learn it from books; I couldn’t catch it from touch. But still it moved me, and moved in this way, I could learn begin to accept her choice.”
On psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott’s work: “Winnicott refuses to either idealize or condemn motherhood. For him, the mother figure simply does her best, knowing that she can only be ‘good enough,’ her devotion definitively ordinary… Through the mother’s small failures and short absences, her soft-headed, wild-mouthed child begins to trust that she’ll return and gradually comes to understand that they are separate yet interrelated beings. This interdependence maps onto care at the end of life as well as its beginning, prompting me to wonder: what is a good enough daughter; what is a good enough death?”
“Daughter-love, as I felt it, was a slippery thing: selfish, selfless; wounded, brave; bored, transfixed. I wanted to unburden my mum, but I also wanted to pull her close and take shelter, to insist on the wide arch of her rainbow, her duty and constancy.”
-
a personal note: i’ve been thinking about a less acute variation of the question above for some time, namely how best to love & care for aging family members while respecting their agency and dignity. i found intervals to be quietly cathartic in its acknowledgement of how much a fkfest of feelings this process can involve—it almost always involves tension between the carer (who wants their loved ones to be careful, take care, protect themselves so they can live longer and be at our side for longer) and the recipient of this care (who sometimes will reject or forego this love if the tradeoff is less autonomy). this tension is one of those dull aches of life that will dog you well into adulthood as you watch your loved ones grow older. my perspective on it (dec 2025) is that the carer will nearly always be the one to concede. it’s only right.
February 8, 2025
Intervals je knjiga, ki jo težko opredeliti žanrsko. Spomini, esejistika, filozofija, zdravstveno-socialna politika. Samo branje je jezikovno lahko, tematsko pa izjemno težko.
Pisateljica pripoveduje o svoji mami, ki se je pri 49 odločila, da ne zmore več živeti, da je bilo desetletje z napredno multiplo sklerozo preveč, bolečine so nevzdržne. A ker ni ne premožna, ne dovolj zdrava, da bi sama lahko potovala v Ŝvico na evtanazijo (ni narobe napisano, sama bi morala na pot!), se odloči za tako imenovano VSED (voluntary stopping eating and drinking) metodo. Hčerka pa je v zadnjih mesecih postala tudi mamina negovalka.
Brooker opisuje tesen odnos z mamo, kako se je predvsem psihično borila z boleznijo in za vsako ceno hotela biti sama svoj gospodar, odpre svoja čustva in slabo vest ob spoštovanju in podpori mamine odločitve ter nas popelje v svet zdravstva, socialnega varstva in zakonodaje na področju lastne izbire za neozdravljive, umirajoče ljudi. Sprašuje se, zakaj je izvodenel pomen besed kot npr. dostojanstvo (ang. dignity), ko se gre za čas ob koncu življenja. Debatira odvečnost in pomembnost vse papirologije ob mamini odločitvi. Marsikaj je kritika britanskega zdravstvenega sistema NHS, večina pa je zelo univerzalna za vse.
Pisateljica pripoveduje o svoji mami, ki se je pri 49 odločila, da ne zmore več živeti, da je bilo desetletje z napredno multiplo sklerozo preveč, bolečine so nevzdržne. A ker ni ne premožna, ne dovolj zdrava, da bi sama lahko potovala v Ŝvico na evtanazijo (ni narobe napisano, sama bi morala na pot!), se odloči za tako imenovano VSED (voluntary stopping eating and drinking) metodo. Hčerka pa je v zadnjih mesecih postala tudi mamina negovalka.
Brooker opisuje tesen odnos z mamo, kako se je predvsem psihično borila z boleznijo in za vsako ceno hotela biti sama svoj gospodar, odpre svoja čustva in slabo vest ob spoštovanju in podpori mamine odločitve ter nas popelje v svet zdravstva, socialnega varstva in zakonodaje na področju lastne izbire za neozdravljive, umirajoče ljudi. Sprašuje se, zakaj je izvodenel pomen besed kot npr. dostojanstvo (ang. dignity), ko se gre za čas ob koncu življenja. Debatira odvečnost in pomembnost vse papirologije ob mamini odločitvi. Marsikaj je kritika britanskega zdravstvenega sistema NHS, večina pa je zelo univerzalna za vse.
December 9, 2025
Anılar toza benzer. Bazen tek görebildiğim, mobilyalara tutunan kalın bir yas tabakası. Derin bir nefes alıp hepsini üflüyorum ve bir süreliğine de olsa, unutuyorum. Bazen ev arkadaşlarım mutfak lavabosunda bıraktığım bulaşıklarıma veya kapı girişindeki ayak izlerime kızıyor. Bu tozu süpürmek için sürekli çalıştığımı görmüyor musunuz, diyorum içimden. Bazen etrafa bakıyorum ve şaşkınlık içinde, dünyanın sonunda temiz olduğunu görüyorum ama birdenbire yine kirleniveriyor. Okul gömleğimin kirli kolları ve yakası ve yatağımın altındaki çöpler aklıma geliyor. Bazen belki hoşuma gider diye öylece tozlu bırakıyorum; kendi dağınıklığımıza sahip çıkıp, onu toplayıp temizleyenlere kızmak gibi. Ara sıra dünyası benim gibi yasla darmadağın biriyle karşılaşacağım ve yalnız olmadığımıza rahatlayarak bu mahrem anlarda içecek, gülecek ve ağlayacağız.
Uzun zamandır anlatımı bu denli derin bir kitap okumamıştım.
Uzun zamandır anlatımı bu denli derin bir kitap okumamıştım.
June 12, 2025
The most touching and beautiful book I have read this year. In this story of her mother’s death I felt I came to know both her and her mother. When she asks you to picture her mother in a photograph she describes I found myself without thinking closing my eyes and doing so. Her citations are beautifully chosen and the writing reflects all of my favorite parts of feminist literature. I think this book should be read out loud.
November 18, 2024
Marianne Brooker, what a beautiful writing that you've done. It made me cry, but most importantly it made me learn so much. It definitely won't ever be easy to witness a mother's death, although a (partly) chosen one--and this book not only managed to document all the feelings and struggles so gracefully, it also highlighted the research, proses, political statements of the whole process. I'm not the same person after reading this. A remarkable work.
December 2, 2024
I’ll recommend this book to book readers out there. The writer has this ability to bring what she went through during the process in the book.
August 14, 2025
This was just really really good
September 21, 2025
so beautiful.. cried!!
March 11, 2024
4.5 stars
Read
September 5, 2024One of the few memoirs that I genuinely enjoyed, this book felt like both a personal reflection and a commentary on something that impacts us all. I was deeply invested in the author's journey, particularly in her mother's quest for a "good death" and how their relationship evolved due to the terminal illness and her mother's decision to end her life.
November 7, 2024
A book which found me at the perfect time.
Read
July 30, 2025Heart-wrenching text sharing a daughter’s recounting of mother’s death in the UK, where medically assisted dying remains illegal. The author shares her deeply interesting and nuanced takes on medically-assisted dying, while still retaining so much humanity in her writing and the ways in which she cared for and loved her mother in her final days. A beautiful read.
July 23, 2024
I started reading Intervals recently after being diagnosed with MS. I wanted to free my mind from the dominant and cruel representations of the illness in movies and felt the need to explore different understandings of being sick and forming alternative relationships with it.
This is why I appreciated this book when a friend recommended it. Reading about the emotions and decisions of the mother in the British context through the lens of her daughter was both valuable and informative. Marianne Brooker’s tentative use of language, her selection of feminist quotes and notes on economics of the illness made me want to continue reading and learn more, but I couldn’t.
About one-third of the way through (if I recollect correctly, as VSED started), my dreams turned dark, and the experiences shared in the book began to haunt me during the day as well. So, I stopped and gave myself time to reflect on my own process. To newly diagnosed readers, I would recommend considering whether they are ready for such heavy reading and to wait a while if their mindsets are fluctuating.
This is why I appreciated this book when a friend recommended it. Reading about the emotions and decisions of the mother in the British context through the lens of her daughter was both valuable and informative. Marianne Brooker’s tentative use of language, her selection of feminist quotes and notes on economics of the illness made me want to continue reading and learn more, but I couldn’t.
About one-third of the way through (if I recollect correctly, as VSED started), my dreams turned dark, and the experiences shared in the book began to haunt me during the day as well. So, I stopped and gave myself time to reflect on my own process. To newly diagnosed readers, I would recommend considering whether they are ready for such heavy reading and to wait a while if their mindsets are fluctuating.
Read
May 4, 2025I think I picked this up thinking it was a memoir about primary progressive MS* (it's not, as is pretty clear from actually reading the description), and as such it took me a while (~15-20% of the book, I'd say), to appreciate it for what it is, which is an awful lot of things, one of them being a grief memoir. On the whole I found this to be a difficult and outstanding book, wide-ranging, wise, and idiosyncratic, capturing both the daughter and the mother, and their relationship.
Also, I happened to be reading a few books written or translated by British people at this time (Fifty Sounds, Austerlitz), and I think all of them had some language that gave me pause as a US English reader. But with this book, it's always notable to read about NHS and austerity from afar, relative to the healthcare system in the US.
Anyway, other reviews I see on here are really great at describing the book, so I don't think I'll attempt that further.
Instead, here are some excerpts that were notable to me:
"Anyone can believe in something, stubborn and singular, but it’s a powerful thing to participate in someone else’s wish."
*This is the type of book I thought this was going to be, and for a little bit it was:
"In 2009, on the cusp of forty and a harsh decade of austerity, my mum started to stumble and slur, slips that her colleagues mistook for alcoholism."
"Around 7,000 people are newly diagnosed with MS each year in the UK. About 10 per cent of those are diagnosed with the primary progressive form: symptoms can be varied but deterioration is persistent, with no remission or cure."
When I told someone about this book and VSED (this was my first exposure to the term), they asked about some of the details: "Searching online, I learned that although assisted dying is illegal in the UK, voluntarily withdrawing from life-sustaining treatment, food and water is not. Doctors are obliged to support patients in the usual way as new symptoms resulting from dehydration emerge and dying quickens. All my mum needed was their agreement that she was mentally competent and a referral to the local hospice. By this method, nobody could intervene to hasten her death and nobody could intervene to save her life."
I loved the author writing about her book club ("where I led a reading group for older people. I don’t have any elderly living relatives and the group had become an adopted circle of grandparents") and how they read The Argonauts ("At first, they hated it.") I was impressed!
The writing about being with someone during their pain:
"However close we can get to one another’s pain, it’s still ‘shrouded in mystery’. Empathy teaches us that we can feel as one another – one’s own skin shakes, head aches and eyes water. But this attenuated feeling announces a distance between the person in pain and the person feeling its ripple."
I liked this reflection:
"Care time, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa writes, ‘suspends the future and distends the present’, as if we ourselves are caught in time’s body, slowly growing too big and too heavy for the moment to hold."
I'm not sure what I thought of this one, but it does make me think:
"Winnicott d W described ageing as ‘growing downwards’, shrinking and returning to a state of dependency."
& I also thought these societal reflections were interesting:
"But wilfulness is neoliberalism’s great scapegoat. In her study of wilfulness, Sara Ahmed notes that ‘when a structural problem becomes diagnosed in terms of the will, then individuals become the problem.’"
"Marx and Engels write that society tacitly manipulates our will: ‘it does not throw you out, but it makes it so uncomfortable for you that you go out of your own will.’"
Elena Ferrante is so great. My mom would have liked this:
"‘My mother left me a word in her dialect that she used to describe how she felt when she was wracked by contradictory sensations that were tearing her apart,’ Elena Ferrante reflects. ‘She said that inside her she had a frantumaglia, a jumble of fragments.’"
Of course, lots about mothers & daughters in this book, and I appreciated the author bringing in other people's writing on the topic as well:
"‘I’ve got to prepare,’ wrote Chantal Akerman before her mother died, ‘but how to do that. Had to imagine myself without her. But I didn’t have enough imagination.’"
And then like this seems like a near-universal sentiment: "We should have gone for more walks before this started."
Yeah: "The creeping sense that there’s nothing left to discover makes her feel somehow more dead."
Also, I happened to be reading a few books written or translated by British people at this time (Fifty Sounds, Austerlitz), and I think all of them had some language that gave me pause as a US English reader. But with this book, it's always notable to read about NHS and austerity from afar, relative to the healthcare system in the US.
Anyway, other reviews I see on here are really great at describing the book, so I don't think I'll attempt that further.
Instead, here are some excerpts that were notable to me:
"Anyone can believe in something, stubborn and singular, but it’s a powerful thing to participate in someone else’s wish."
*This is the type of book I thought this was going to be, and for a little bit it was:
"In 2009, on the cusp of forty and a harsh decade of austerity, my mum started to stumble and slur, slips that her colleagues mistook for alcoholism."
"Around 7,000 people are newly diagnosed with MS each year in the UK. About 10 per cent of those are diagnosed with the primary progressive form: symptoms can be varied but deterioration is persistent, with no remission or cure."
When I told someone about this book and VSED (this was my first exposure to the term), they asked about some of the details: "Searching online, I learned that although assisted dying is illegal in the UK, voluntarily withdrawing from life-sustaining treatment, food and water is not. Doctors are obliged to support patients in the usual way as new symptoms resulting from dehydration emerge and dying quickens. All my mum needed was their agreement that she was mentally competent and a referral to the local hospice. By this method, nobody could intervene to hasten her death and nobody could intervene to save her life."
I loved the author writing about her book club ("where I led a reading group for older people. I don’t have any elderly living relatives and the group had become an adopted circle of grandparents") and how they read The Argonauts ("At first, they hated it.") I was impressed!
The writing about being with someone during their pain:
"However close we can get to one another’s pain, it’s still ‘shrouded in mystery’. Empathy teaches us that we can feel as one another – one’s own skin shakes, head aches and eyes water. But this attenuated feeling announces a distance between the person in pain and the person feeling its ripple."
I liked this reflection:
"Care time, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa writes, ‘suspends the future and distends the present’, as if we ourselves are caught in time’s body, slowly growing too big and too heavy for the moment to hold."
I'm not sure what I thought of this one, but it does make me think:
"Winnicott d W described ageing as ‘growing downwards’, shrinking and returning to a state of dependency."
& I also thought these societal reflections were interesting:
"But wilfulness is neoliberalism’s great scapegoat. In her study of wilfulness, Sara Ahmed notes that ‘when a structural problem becomes diagnosed in terms of the will, then individuals become the problem.’"
"Marx and Engels write that society tacitly manipulates our will: ‘it does not throw you out, but it makes it so uncomfortable for you that you go out of your own will.’"
Elena Ferrante is so great. My mom would have liked this:
"‘My mother left me a word in her dialect that she used to describe how she felt when she was wracked by contradictory sensations that were tearing her apart,’ Elena Ferrante reflects. ‘She said that inside her she had a frantumaglia, a jumble of fragments.’"
Of course, lots about mothers & daughters in this book, and I appreciated the author bringing in other people's writing on the topic as well:
"‘I’ve got to prepare,’ wrote Chantal Akerman before her mother died, ‘but how to do that. Had to imagine myself without her. But I didn’t have enough imagination.’"
And then like this seems like a near-universal sentiment: "We should have gone for more walks before this started."
Yeah: "The creeping sense that there’s nothing left to discover makes her feel somehow more dead."
September 8, 2024
Of all the books I have read on similar stories, I have found myself not to connect with this one. The book flows and the writing style is nice but just didn’t work out for me.
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