Death of an Ordinary Man

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Brought to you by Penguin.

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.

'Please read this book. It may very well change how you live' Rachel Clarke

'I was spellbound' Kathryn Mannix

'By the end I was left shaken, deeply moved' Christos Tsiolkas

'This book will be a lifeline for so many people' Seán Hewitt

'To read this book is a privilege, a gift on the craft of dying' Amy Key

© Sarah Perry 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics 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
[A] deeply affecting memoir… What grips in these pages, and drives the writing, is Perry’s tremendous sense of rhythm and pace... We cannot but be somewhat changed by this remarkable book
Daily Telegraph
As singular and stunning as I knew it would be. Through reading it, I felt I came to know David, and also that I came to know myself better. I could see the world differently afterwards and could feel a little more at peace with it. Only the very best books do that. Sarah is in a league of her own as a writer – I don't know how she does it.
Sara Collins
It’s not easy to account for what makes this book so special…What makes this book gem-like is that it succeeds in conveying the reality of death as this monumental, mythic thing that coexists surreally with the mundane world of bin collections and neighbours hanging out their washing... [Perry] has written beautifully and compellingly about the life of an unexceptional man, and an experience that is coming to all of us – and shown that there is no such thing as an ordinary life, or an ordinary death
Guardian

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