This was a tough read, but a conversation that is not brought up enough. I commend the author for sharing her Mom’s story and her process.

A must-read if you would like more information on VSED (Voluntary Stopping Eating & Drinking), but I again must caution that this is not for everyone.

“Our choices are only as fair, safe, and uncompromised as the society in which we live. In this way, our interdependence is the condition and not the limit for our individual choices, the world the precondition for our will.”

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! Intervals releases on September 24th, 2024 in the US from Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Intervals by Marianne Brooker is a harrowing yet profound meditation on death, autonomy, and the societal structures that shape our experiences of care. Brooker reflects on her mother’s decision to die after living with multiple sclerosis for a decade, using this deeply personal narrative to ask complex questions about what it means to die—and to live—under capitalism and austerity. The result is a heart-wrenching exploration of care, grief, and the inescapable pressures that mold our final moments.

The book begins with Brooker’s mother’s diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, which was initially mistaken for alcoholism, and then vertigo. Over time, the cost of medical treatment and care rendered her houseless, scraping by on welfare in a system designed to abandon the most vulnerable. Faced with mounting pain, poverty, and a deeply ableist healthcare structure, Brooker’s mother chooses VSED (voluntarily stopping eating and drinking), a decision that Brooker depicts as an act of self-determination in a world that offers little compassion or agency to disabled people. At just 26 years old, Brooker becomes both a caregiver and a witness to her mother’s death.

What makes Intervals so powerful is how Brooker intertwines her mother’s personal story with broader ableist critiques. She challenges the dehumanizing effects of capitalism, ableism, and austerity, examining the ways in which care, under these systems, becomes a burden. She draws upon thinkers like Judith Butler, Anne Boyer, Maggie Nelson, and Johanna Hedva to expand on themes of care and autonomy, critiquing the medical-industrial complex and the commodification of dying. Brooker’s reflections on the UK funeral industry, its capitalist motivations, and the medicalization of death illuminate the absurdity and injustice of how we handle life’s final chapter.

One of the book’s most compelling arguments is that a “good death” should not be reduced to clinical processes or institutional interventions. Brooker insists that community care, death doulas, and honoring one’s autonomy offer more humane alternatives. Her examination of care is also deeply relational—bearing witness, as Brooker poignantly argues, is itself an act of care, even when intervention is not possible or desired.

Brooker’s prose is reflective and lyrical, skillfully moving from the personal to the political with urgency and intimacy. Her writing confronts the painful contradictions of caregiving in a world that demands productivity over compassion, dignity over the inevitable messiness of death. She invites us to consider how we can better love one another, even in the most difficult circumstances.

Ultimately, Intervals is not just about dying; it is a call to reclaim care from the capitalist systems that distort it. By interweaving personal grief with radical political thought, Brooker challenges us to imagine a world where care and connection are not burdens, but vital parts of a more compassionate society. Thank you, Marianne, for bearing witness and sharing this story. It is truly revolutionary.

📖 Recommended For: Readers who are drawn to reflective, philosophical prose; those interested in exploring the intersections of care, autonomy, and structural violence; anyone who values radical critiques of capitalism and the medicalization of death; fans of Maggie Nelson, Judith Butler, and Anne Boyer.

🔑 Key Themes: Caregiving under Capitalism, Autonomy and Choice in Death, Grief and Interdependence, Ableism and Austerity, Medicalization and the Funeral Industry, Community Care.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Chronic Illness (severe), Terminal Illness (severe), Medical Content (severe), Death of Parent (severe), Grief (severe), Animal Death (moderate), Pandemic (minor).

**Please note that while VSED is not considered suicide nor an eating disorder, readers who find this kind of content difficult to engage with may be triggered by Brooker’s mother’s story.

Full review will be posted Sept. 23, 2024

Booker’s mother was diagnosed some years ago with primary progressive multiple sclerosis, and before she turns fifty, the disease has become unbearable. In 2019, she makes a decision for herself, and she makes it clear: she will voluntarily stop eating and drinking (VSED), which will enable her to die in her own home. This choice is legal in the UK, where Booker and her mother live, but it occupies a gray area in almost every dimension Booker considers.
Booker has a PhD in literature, and these essays weave in literary quotations to shine a wider light on the narrow personal experience she’s presenting. I was beginning to wonder if these quotations were intended to act as a device to distance the author and reader from the difficult process of sitting with Booker’s mother as she slowly ends her life, or if they were meant to shore up Booker’s excellent arguments about the challenge of living and dying as a poor person with few options available for care during life or at its end. Booker seemed to be finding comfort in knowing that others have dealt with similar struggles and written eloquently about them, as she herself does. There’s a solidarity to be found in literature that spans time and space.
The essays tackle far more than one woman’s illness, though it is this illness that provides Booker with the basis for her intellectual queries. She tackles systemic issues in healthcare, like class expectations, the restriction choice due to poverty, the patchwork of care made up of family and professional caregivers, the power of doctors and insurers over medical decisions, and the solid weave and gaping holes in the safety nets provided by governments and communities. This one woman’s death provides a lens for examining may of the ills of twenty-first century healthcare challenges in the global north.
The collection manages to be both a balm for people who find themselves navigating these systems and a call to action for those who are tired of butting heads with anonymous systems holding our health hostage to their profits and bureaucracy. It’s sharply intelligent and deeply caring.

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!)

Brooker's mother was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis in 2009. As her mother's health continues to decline, Brooker shares her own personal philosophy and social criticism about the ethics of our health system and the right to die.

This is easily one of the best nonfiction pieces that I have read regarding capitalism and body autonomy. Exploring the concept of what makes a "good death" and the ethics behind how we treat terminally ill individuals, I found Brooker's insights on these topics deeply moving as the book reads much like a memoir but does not lack in critical analysis. These topics are viewed from a feministic lens, displaying overall tones of anger and sincerity that make such a compelling read. For anyone who has in interest in the role of hospice services, the economics of care, or who has lost someone to a terminal illness, I would strongly recommend picking this up.

Thank you to Fitzcarraldo Editions and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to give advanced praise to this book.

Intervals will be published on September 24th, 2024

A very affecting personal narrative about caring for a mother with MS as she chooses to end her life, and a harrowing critique the political and social conditions around care, disability, death and dying.

I loved this beautiful, heartbreaking book about mother/daughter relationships and what love truly means. It's a startling book about loss, but also a book about what it means to love and ethically care for someone. This book raises new questions which demand our attention.

Thanks to NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions for the ARC!

Marianne Brooker’s "Intervals" is a marvel—a messy-by-necessity extended meditation on grief and what it means to live and die in a capitalist world.

If that sounds sterile, a quick glance at the book’s premise will dispel that impression. The author's mother was diagnosed with MS and eventually chose to refuse food and drink. How does one begin to understand the end of a life?

As Brooker acknowledges, end-of-life choice is often framed as a moral binary, but she’s quick to point out that such an attitude is inadequate for all of the decisions that nuance grief. Palliative care demands a better understanding of care itself. As the author writes, “Care is its neighbour, love, made solid.”

The question, then, is what it means to love somebody who is leaving.

In response, Brooker offers the idea of “intervals” as a contrast to “interventions.” Rather than stepping in, care involves stepping back to create shared space. This concept sustains the book, scaffolding an autotheory approach reminiscent of writers like Christina Sharpe—a scholar referenced repeatedly here. Unsurprisingly, it can all be a bit heady, but it’s impossible to reduce the book to one thing.

"Intervals" is tonally cacophonous, moving abruptly from heartfelt grief to detached theorizing to bemused reflection. It can be a little jarring, but I found that it effectively amplifies the confusion of loss. A discussion on healthcare access might suddenly be bifurcated by an anecdote on the mother’s baffling decision to buy a lottery ticket with foreknowledge of her death. We can almost feel Brooker struggling in real time to make sense of the situation, but commendably, she never succumbs to platitudes or the impulse to turn her mother into an object lesson.

The book is, however, deeply situated but unsettled in political realities. There’s a lot here about how death is discursively constructed and financially constrained by those with power, and it feels like an important conversation to have. Dying might be a universal experience, but we’re awfully reluctant to talk about how to go through it better—more thoughtfully, more companionably. And, more importantly, we’re too resistant to creating a world that prevents early death by shifting away from a focus on the body’s utility.

There are no easy answers to the questions Marianne Brooker thoughtfully poses in "Intervals," but she offers a simple encouragement:

“If this book is an attempt at saying anything at all, it is to insist we keep trying.”

Thank you to NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

Intervals is a wonderful edition to Fitzcarraldo's catalog. I already love many of their other books, but Brooker's collection of essays are contemplative and vivid. She plays with structure, a meditation of her thoughts intertwined with non-fiction tidbits and research. Brooker is a talented writer, with gems such as "Individuals shoulder a burden of pain and risk because we haven’t taken collective responsibility for the complex questions of how to live and die well." Because she is talking about her mother's MS, it also begs the question of navel-gazing, The first essay is about advocacy and medical aid in dying, and Brooker weaves her own story with ease. I'm still finishing this one: it's dense, but I had to write a review because her prose is deft and feels timely because I also do care work, and Brooker is a caregiver and excellent writer.

Intervals is an eye-opening collection of essays by Marianne Brooker in which she navigates her mother’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis, her ultimate death, and the aftermath. Using razor-sharp prose, she forces readers to examine the intricacies and flaws of the healthcare system and the government’s support (or lack of) of those defined by disability. Exploring bereavement; caretaking; death doulas and funeral care; the politics of medically assisted death and end-of-life decisions; and what it means to die a meaningful death; this is a unique blend of memoir, research, and social critique that was begging to be written. A call to action to, at the very least, learn to empathize with those who are ill.

It is so touching, sincere, and searing that it will make your heart ache and create a fire within your belly.

Thank you Fitzcarraldo Editions and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review! Posted to Goodreads.