Intervals

What makes a good death? A good daughter? In 2009, in her forties and with 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.