Marianne Brooker – Intervals (2024)

January 2025 • Non-fiction

In 2022 Marianne Brooker won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize for her essay proposal, Intervals. Through this annual competition she was given the opportunity to shape her proposal into a book-length essay, to be published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in February of 2024.

I picked up the book early last year, read it late-December, and it absolutely floored me.

Her essay is about her mother, Jane, who suffered from Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis. The disease became unbearable for her and a decade after her diagnosis, to end her suffering, she decided to end her life. As an assisted death at home was out of the question—it would mean prosecution, and possibly imprisonment for her daughter—she chose to refuse food and water, and deny life-saving treatment by her carers.

Brooker, then 26 years old, writes about the surreal experience of caring for a loved one ending their life in such a way. About the turbulence of worries stirring inside of her, and the day-to-day logistics that weirdly—stupidly, naturally—exist in the wake of something so momentous. She manages to get across the whirlwind of chaos that swooshes through their lives, as well as the deep love she felt for her mother, and the grief she experienced; she finds ways to make the reader feel like they're right there in the room with them, holding hands, listening to music, dabbing her mother's lips with water; and captures not only the weeks leading up to her mother's death but the years of her life, too, most tenderly.

She weaves into the book what she's read throughout this period, quoting from and finding solace in the works of other authors (Chantal Akerman, Maggie Nelson and Emily Berry, to name a few). From philosophers to psychoanalysts to poets, she uses their writings as glimmering, guiding lights throughout, and finds ways to make those writings sparkle, triggering (for me) an immense appreciation for and interest in their works. She writes, fiercely and impressively, about the politics surrounding her mother's disability, the stupidity of her country's hollowed-out health and social care systems, and the ethics of end-of-life care.

As the author wrote in a letter in February of last year:

Intervals is an attempt at reckoning with personal, ethical and political questions of choice: what does it mean to defend one’s autonomy in a world choked by austerity, or to speak of dignity without denying the realities of dependency and doubt? The questions are not individualizing—did she jump or was she pushed?—but collective: was there even ground beneath her feet? What kind of world have we built for one another?

Never have I read such a precisely worded book about care, grief, love and death. Intervals is perfectly composed: a story of personal hardship, a philosophical look at care and being cared for, and perhaps most importantly, a beautiful memorial and testament to the author's mother.

Intervals by Marianne Brooker
Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2024

And, on Fitzcarraldo

Fitzcarraldo Editions has quickly established itself as my favourite publisher, and I've previously recommended books by Claire-Louise Bennett and Olga Tokarczuk. I thought I'd share a profile on them, written by The New York Times in 2022. They are a small publisher, steadily putting out works of high quality and becoming the home of a few Nobel laureates in the process. It's incredible to see, and I recommend keeping an eye on their work.

How a Tiny British Publisher Became the Home of Nobel Laureates (Published 2022)

Fitzcarraldo Editions is not yet 10 years old and has only six full-time staff members. Since its founding, three of its authors have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The New York TimesBy

One book recommendation, once per month.
Book #23 • January 2025