Intervalsis an exceptional book, for which every deserved superlative seems cliched, in part because the language of illness, death and bereavement often feels too hollowed out by use to accommodate the magnitude of those experiences It would require a huge shift in the way we understand ourselves as interdependent, as valuable beyond our individual, measurable outputs and assets; about the way we appreciate care as reciprocal, as granting us a way not only to provide comfort and to alleviate distress, but also to appreciate fully our humanity. This angry, loving, sorrowing and profound book is a magnificent starting point for that radical imaginative act.
Alex Clark,Observer
Intervalsis an endlessly moving and profoundly generous telling of what it means to give and receive care. Stunning in its intimacy and expansive in its political purpose, Brookers writing invites us to think deeply about the relationship between giving care and honouring life. Through visceral, tactile details of creating, working, making and tending, Brooker brings us into the spaces where caring happens, where life and its endings happen. A rare, revelatory, and truly radical book.
Elinor Cleghorn, author ofUnwell Women
I am now both mad and grateful for this formidable work of thought, which subtly yet profoundly shifts the terms of discussion on dying. What kind of world have we built for one another, asks Marianne Brooker, where many must struggle to be present for their own deaths? The many who live on borrowed time, in borrowed homes, dispossessed by a society that dangles rights without furnishing means? From nothing less than heartbreak, Brooker has germinated an exquisite and extraordinary reckoning, bringing a sorely needed focus on the substance of life to questions of
a socially just death.
Amber Husain, author ofMeat Love
I marvelled at Marianne BrookersIntervals. Out of her mother's death, she weaves a short, tender, angry yet clear-eyed book about the nature of love, and what it requires of us all if were doing it right.
Joanna Biggs, author ofA Life of Ones Own
'Both an elegy and an account of interrupted time, in this generous book Marianne Brooker draws together threads of memoir, social history and literature to tell a lyrical, ethical, and above all political story of pain, care, and maternal connection. Deftly, movingly, Brooker reminds us of the interdependence at the heart of all our lives, that we inherit more than biological matter, and that the dying mourn the living, too.'
Helen Charman, author ofMother State
Intervalsis an extraordinary essay that is both unflinchingly intimate and radically political. It is the simple account of a daughter losing her mother too soon. It is also an examination of class, money and structural power. Brookers striking achievement is to never be prescriptive while, at the same time, never holding back from the force of her argument. It is, I suppose, an elegy. And like the best of elegies, and the bond it describes it is charged with life.
Nathan Filer, author ofThe Shock of the Fall
A beautifully written portrayal of caring and end-of-life decisions exquisitely sensitive, passionate and angry in its railing against our broken social care system.
Sam Mills, author ofThe Fragments of my Father
