The Book Prize Index

Intervals

Marianne Brooker

What makes a good death? A good daughter? In 2009, with her forties and a 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 unlikely ways, but over time her ability to work, to move and to live without pain diminished drastically. In Intervals, Brooker charts her care for her mother, following her decision to refuse food and water in a bid to end her suffering. She turns to various sources - from Anne Boyer and Donald Winnicott, to Practical Magic and Coraline - to make sense of this experience and to explore the precarious space between proximity and complicity. Blending memoir, polemic and feminist philosophy, Intervals is a deeply moving work that harnesses the political potential of grief to raise essential questions about choice, interdependence and end-of-life care.

Memoir & AutobiographyMemoir & Autobiography · medium confidenceMemoir & Autobiography81 signalsLlm Classifier: Memoir & Autobiography -> Memoir & AutobiographyKeyword Classifier: Arts & Criticism -> Arts & CriticismTopic Classifier: Literature & Writers -> Arts & CriticismLiterature & WritersArt, Music & Performance

Award History

0 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
National Book Critics Circle Award for CriticismMajor2024FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact. Automated checks have flagged this profile for extra review.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • Marianne Brooker72%
    Show lower-confidence suggestions

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Anne Boyer40%
    • Donald Winnicott38%

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    The book argues that end-of-life decisions and caregiving create a precarious moral space where choice, interdependence, and proximity can slide into complicity.

    Model confidence 44%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    45 / 100 academic

    Trade / academic crossover

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 62%.