Death of an Ordinary Man

Death of an Ordinary Man is an unforgettable account of this universal aspect of life. It is not a book about grief: it is a book about dying, and it is a book about family, and care and love.

Sarah Perry's father-in-law David died in the autumn of 2022, only nine days after a cancer diagnosis. Until then he'd been a healthy and happy man: he loved stamp collecting, fish and chips, comic novels, his local church, and the Antiques Roadshow. He was in some ways a very ordinary man, but as he began to die, it became clear how extraordinary he was.

Sarah and her husband Robert nursed David themselves at home, eventually with the help of carers and visiting nurses. They bathed and cleaned and dressed him, comforted him in pain, sat with him through waking and sleeping, talked to him, sang to him, prayed with him. Day by day and hour by hour, they witnessed what happens to the body and spirit as death approaches and finally arrives.

Review

What a luminously beautiful book, an instant classic. Every page is suffused with such honesty, tenderness and love. Few people have written about dying with such clear-eyed accuracy and immense humanity. Never flinching, never sugar-coating, Sarah has captured brilliantly how caring for someone you love in their final days can upend everything you thought you knew about living. Please read this book. It may very well change how you live -- Rachel Clarke

Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man is unflinching yet generous, a book that deals with grief and loss and death with acute honesty and without a trace of euphemism, with no retreat into sentimentality. It is scrupulous in its intent and in the writing and by the end I was left shaken, deeply moved. It is beautiful, a work of love and grace -- Christos Tsiolkas

I have just sat and read Sarah's wonderful book, nodding and agreeing with so many tiny details that she has noticed and reflected on with a writer's eye and a loving daughter-in-law's heart. Just beautiful. I hope her luminous writing will console and encourage her readers, all of whom are mortals. This book is a slice of reality that comforts even as it confronts us. It is a book filled with love and human frailty, and I was spellbound -- Kathryn Mannix

It’s very simple – a description of her father-in-law’s final illness and death – but it is beautiful and profound and completely gripping… The idea of a pain-free, comfortable birth or a pain-free, comfortable death is as misleading as the idea of a pain free, comfortable life. Death, even a good death, will be hard work at time and must be borne both by the person dying and by those around them. And that is natural and right, and something we learn by living a life -- Mark Haddon

I have not been moved like this by a book in a very long time. Death of an Ordinary Man is a masterful piece of writing. It gives dignity and weight to something as ordinary, as extraordinary, as death. By redeeming a common experience in all its intimacy, panic, disorientation and unexpected light, this book will be a lifeline for so many people. Those of us who have witnessed the death of a loved one will thank Sarah Perry for witnessing us in return. -- Seán Hewitt

Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man is an act of devotion, not only to her father-in-law but to the art of memoir. What makes this book incredibly special is its intimate attentiveness to dying – how it transforms the subject and their witnesses – in Perry’s intelligent, precise and radiant prose. To read this book is a privilege, a gift on the craft of dying. I know I’ll reach for it when I need both courage and consolation -- Amy Key

Haunting, mesmerising, fiercely intelligent and deeply humane, Sarah Perry's Death of an Ordinary Man is as gripping as any thriller, an exploration of the ways in which every ordinary life and death are unrepeatable, unfathomable, extraordinary -- Naomi Alderman

About the Author

Sarah Perry is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Enlightenment, Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award. Enlightenment was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024 and her other work has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.