The experience of caring: In conversation with Marianne Brooker

In all my reading, I’ve encountered few works like Marianne’s Intervals.

Her book offers a capacious look at life, death, and dying through a chronicling of her mother’s decision to withdraw from life-sustaining treatments. As she describes it, “Intervals are temporary places of rupture and of rest; they are liminal, partial and in-between. … I invite you to bear loose witness — to sit with me, as close to the pain as I can get — on the condition that the story doesn’t end here, that there is yet a world to win.”

The result is an expansive, important, and generous work. I gained a lot from having had the benefit of her perspective.

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Marianne Brooker is based in Bristol, where she works for a charity campaigning for climate and social justice. She has a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London and a background in arts research and teaching. She won the 2022 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize for Intervals, her first book.

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Song: “Walk Through the Park,” by TrackTribe