Death of an Ordinary Man

by Sarah Perry

There was relief, and there was loss – it was the saddest thing we’d ever seen, and the best thing we had ever done.

Sarah Perry’s father-in-law David was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in November 2022. Nine days later, he died. This extraordinary book recounts the last days of David’s life, and what it took for Sarah and her husband Rob to care for him at home until the end.

David’s suburban bungalow becomes, for these nine days, the whole world. All around them are the details of an ordinary man’s life – the armchair worn to his shape, an empty pair of slippers, a calendar of that year’s birthdays nearly all marked off.

Their sole concern is David’s suffering and how to alleviate it. Health and care professionals come and go, by turns devastatingly brisk or stunningly humane. Friends help where they can – but mostly, they are alone with David. They bathe and clean and dress him, comfort him if he cries out in pain, sit with him as he wakes and sleeps, talk to him, sing to him, pray with him. Day by day and hour by hour, they witness what happens to the body and spirit as death approaches.

Care and dying affect us all – whether we care for others or are cared for ourselves. Death of an Ordinary Man is an unforgettable account of this universal aspect of life. It is a book that gives us courage to accept the reality of death and shows us what a privilege it is to be able to accompany someone through the last days of their life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Grief, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, History

191 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2025

About the author

Sarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979, and was raised as a Strict Baptist. Having studied English at Anglia Ruskin University she worked as a civil servant before studying for an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative Writing and the Gothic at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2004 she won the Spectator's Shiva Naipaul Award for travel writing.

In January 2013 she was Writer-in-Residence at Gladstone's Library. Here she completed the final draft of her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood , which was published by Serpent's Tail in June 2014 to international critical acclaim. It won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award 2014, and was longlisted for the 2014 Guardian First Book Award and nominated for the 2014 Folio Prize. In January and February 2016 Sarah was the UNESCO City of Literature Writer-in-Residence in Prague.

Her second novel, The Essex Serpent , was published by Serpent's Tail in May 2016. It was a number one bestseller in hardback, and was named Waterstones Book of the Year 2016. It was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2017, and was longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction 2017, the Wellcome Book Prize, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and the New Angle Prize for Literature. It was broadcast on Radio 4 as a Book at Bedtime in April 2017, is being translated into eleven languages, and has been chosen for the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club 2017.

Sarah has spoken at a number of institutions including Gladstone's Library, the Centre of Theological Inquiry at Princeton, and the Anglo-American University in Prague, on subjects including theology, the history and status of friendship in literature, the Gothic, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Her essays have been published in the Guardian and the Spectator, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She reviews fiction for the Guardian and the Financial Times.

She currently lives in Norwich, where she is completing her third novel.

Reviews

[Claire Fuller]

It was a joy (in the saddest way) to read this straightforward story about the death of Sarah's father in law, David. I have been tired for a long time of memoirs about death, bereavement, grief or illness that feel the need to bring in some kind of healing journey or action. I think I was was tired of them before H is for Hawk and that was quite a while ago. This story, told simply and very beautifully (I underlined so many sentences) documents David's cancer diagnosis and only nine days later his death. Sarah write about the facts and about her feelings, including the frustrations, the irritations and the love. There is so much love in this book, and it moved me to tears. I suppose I am in place (dealing with, thinking about the recent death of my own father albeit in utterly different circumstances) where I am open to the message that its helpful to talk (write) about death in the most uncomplicated ways, but still, I recommend it to all.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

(4.5) Perry recognises what a sacred privilege it was to witness her father-in-law’s death, which occurred just nine days after his diagnosis with oesophageal cancer. She concludes, like Simone de Beauvoir does of her mother in A Very Easy Death, that David’s end was as good as one might hope for. Viz., he was in his late seventies, remained at home, was looked after by his son and daughter-in-law, more or less maintained his mental capacity until the end, and showed minimal signs of pain or distress. Still, every death is fraught, to some degree, with bureaucracy, medical error and pangs of regret. There is a searing encounter here with an unfeeling GP; on the other hand, there is such kindness from nurses, relatives and a pastor.

The beauty of Perry’s memoir is its patient, clear-eyed unfolding of every stage of dying, a natural and inexorable process that in other centuries would have been familiar to anyone – having observed it with siblings, children, parents, neighbours, distant relatives and so on. She felt she was joining a specifically womanly lineage of ministering, a destiny so quotidian that she didn’t feel uncomfortable with any of the intimate care involved. I thought of my sister and her mother- and sister-in-law sitting vigil at my brother-in-law’s deathbed in 2015.

Perry traces the physical changes in David as he moved with alarming alacrity from normal, if slowed, daily life to complete dependency to death’s door. At the same time, she is aware that this is only her own perspective on events, so she records her responses and emotional state and, to a lesser extent, her husband’s. Her quiver of allusions is perfectly chosen and she lands on just the right tone: direct but tender. Because of her and David’s shared upbringing, the points of reference are often religious, but not obtrusive. My only wish is to have gotten more of a sense of David alive. There’s a brief section on his life at the start, mirrored by a short “Afterlife” chapter at the end telling what succeeded his death. But the focus is very much on the short period of his illness and the days of his dying. During this time, he appears confused and powerless. He barely says anything beyond “I’m in a bit of a muddle,” to refer to anything from incontinence to an inability to eat. At first I thought this was infantilizing him. But I came to see it as a way of reflecting how death strips everything away.

As I read, I often had tears in my eyes, thinking of the deaths I have experienced at second hand and the many more that will come my way until my own. In this gift of a book, Perry captures the emotional poles of bearing witness, and the dignity and uniqueness of every life:

There was relief, and there was loss – it was the saddest thing we’d ever seen, and the best thing we had ever done – all these things existing together undiminished, and never cancelling each other out.

now I understand there are no ordinary lives – that every death is the end of a single event in time’s history: an event so improbable it represents a miracle, and irreplaceable in every particular.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Julie]

I check the lists of new books on order at my local library regularly and this one caught my interest.

[Melanie O'Neill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt that it was such a privilege to read this and I struggle to put into words how this book moved me in so many ways. I was blown away by how it made me feel, bringing a lump to my throat, tears in my eyes but also giving me a feeling of hope. I thank the author for writing this.
I am an only child and someday I know the inevitable will happen and I will be in the same situation. It’s a fact of life, but this book will stay with me for a long time.
Read on my Free BorrowBox App.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘……there are no ordinary lives- every death is the end of a single event in time’s history: an event so improbable it represents a miracle, and irreplaceable in every particular.’

Let’s be honest, this book is not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s such a moving and compelling read that at times I just couldn’t bear to put it down. Having just been recently bereaved myself, the rawness of reading this so soon after made it so much more relatable to me, but I’m glad I read it when I did and am grateful to NetGalley for the opportunity to read it.

I love Sarah Perry’s writing, and her faith journey fascinates me, even if it’s something she refers to as just ‘chilling embers.’ It is the faith of David however, her father-in-law and the ‘ordinary man’ of the book, which I thinks stirs Sarah the most, and she honours that in the way she, and the family support him when he is diagnosed with Oesophageal cancer. What follows is a tender, compassionate and naturally human reflection on death, grief and the void it leaves.

[Esther · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't remember the last time I saw David, but I do remember his shock of white hair and his particular Heh! Heh! laugh. Sarah does such a beautiful job of showing what kind of a man he was just by his comportment at the end of his life and her reflections on their relationship; it made me regret missing the chance to know him better.

Obviously I don't need to tell you how poignant & incredible & well-crafted is the prose. I think the more impressive accomplishment here is Sarah's ability to draw out the human response to death and dying and the lives of those involved, and to place the reader directly alongside them all at Yarmouth & the hospital & David's bedside. what a perfect title! For Sarah (as you would expect) does not shy away from the details and mechanics of dying or an atmosphere pregnant with grief or her own tendencies to melodramatise the mundane, and in so doing outfits the reader with a sense of what to expect when their time comes. (Perhaps this is just because I have never yet known real loss.)

It would feel absurd to say I enjoyed reading this, so I shan't. Everyone should read it though because David deserves it & Sarah & Rob deserve to have someone know what happened & you deserve to consume the prose, which is really very beautiful.

[Vanessa McMurtrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tender, honest, helpful, triggering, but beautifully written. 4.5 * if I could

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gorgeous act of love this was.

Death and grief are subjects in many fiction and non-fiction books I choose to read, and while acknowledging that this is an inherently personal subject, not many of them get it right for me. I’m someone who has seen a lot of death, endured enough grief from a young age to have heard things like The Richmond Curse Has Struck Again, and Sarah You’re A Death Doula in the Making. I’ll often read books about grief and think - “I’m not sure this person has ever felt loss” (an unkind thing to think as a way of judging emotive writing skills, but if you are choosing grief and death as your thematic focus, you’ll need to forgive me for that line of judgement). Heart the Lover, for example, to call out a recent crowd favourite made me feel nothing, reading reviews of people writing about how they sobbed at the end left me feeling as though we’d read different books.

This though … reading this was one of the first times I’ve cried at the end of a book in a very long time. I think it was the simplicity of it. Death and grief was not a trope. It was a lense through which to write an act of life and love, and that authenticity was staggering.

[Tundra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written or, as I can now imagine David might say, “this was excellent.” I probably could not have read this 3 or 4 years ago as I would have been reliving an experience that was too recent, personal and painful. Perry has captured her father-in-law with so much dignity and grace but also explored the idea that a single human life is both a small and insignificant thing but also a precious and unique thing. There’s no confusion in this contradiction it is just a matter of fact reality.

[Catherine Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A profound, entirely absorbing and utterly heartbreaking meditation on death, dying and the human response to it. Perry expertly draws you into this, as if you too are witnessing David’s final days. She captures the entirely human but incomprehensible experience of watching someone die so beautifully; something which is so hard to articulate and yet universally experienced in some way. Read it, remember people you have lost and give your loved ones a hug.

[Matthias · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a compassionate account of a close person dying. It tells that dying does not necessarily mean to go to bed and not to wake up, that it can be hard and painful work.
What it doesn't tell (and that is maybe a good thing) is that dying can be much, much harder.

[Alexander Petkovski · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5 Stars

Beautiful and a sad book. My third one from the Women’s Prize Longlist, and the my ratings keep getting higher.

[Francis Pellow]

very powerful book which felt over abridged as Radio 4 book of the week.

[Megha Santosh K Khaitan · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some books that cannot be rushed. The subject is heavy and one cannot to go further than a couple pages per day. The kind of literature that’s part of you but one you cannot write. Books where you feel seen, like reading your own story. They mirror the reader’s life and remind them of their bygone but unforgettable hardships. Books that enter every corner of our emotions. A strenuous relationship that reminds you of your intimate choices. Family feuds and sibling rivalry leads you down a rabbit hole of your own. Subjects dealing with bullying, ranking, social control, power, abuse, physical or emotional and you cannot help but shed tears for the vulnerable self you once were or are. Multigenerational sagas gets you inquisitive enough to dig your own. Chaotic workplace culture and you find yourself on the same page. Parenting fallibles and ill-advices send you back to a cascade of memories. Take your pick.

The best thing would be to privilege one’s peace of mind over these books. Self preservation, I say. But as obstinate readers we are drawn towards them, curious to know how the world deals with situations we were once in. In fact, they become part of the healing journey navigating us through a tough time. In further fact, they also act as blueprints for life and invite reflection and gentle changes.

I’ve been a fan of Sarah Perry since The Essex Serpent and Enlightenment (much recommended). In this non fiction she writes about her father in law’s last few months, his decrepitude, their small domestic exchanges and the bright spots in their lives. Loving hard enough and when the time comes grieving with equal measure. Many a times I felt she’s wearing the same thoughts as mine.

A writer who preserves a loved one’s memories in ink.

These are books that you read with a sense of empathy and where every reader’s experience is diverge. Though emotions get magnified and yet, yet they perfectly fit that hole in your heart which I would say is not such a bad trade.

[Solenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry is simple, tender and deeply intimate account of the final chapter of her much‑loved father‑in‑law David’s life, structuring the book around three movements: life, death, and afterlife.

In Life, Perry paints a gentle portrait of an unassuming man she first met at sixteen. David loved trips to Yarmouth, fish and chips, and a good joke with a lovely chuckle. Affection was quiet, often contained to a handshake between father and son, until illness forced intimacy upon them. After his diagnosis, the boundaries of their family shifted as Perry and her husband Robert stepped into the role of caregivers, honouring his wish to remain at home for palliative care as he didn't want to cause any fuss.

Death unfolds over the nine days from diagnosis to David’s final breath, during which Perry and Robert moved into his home. She writes with clear‑eyed precision about the quiet admin of dying, forms to be filled, paperwork late-night pharmacy runs, the scramble to correct paperwork, the rotation of carers and nurses who brought both relief and guidance, and the pastor whose hymns and prayers threaded comfort through those final days.

In Afterlife, Perry turns inward, exploring the hollowing realisation that David is truly gone and that we need to recognise death as an inevitable and essential part of living.

This is a beautifully simple, deeply affecting account of the death of an ordinary man and the legacy we all leave behind.

[jolovesbooks]

Audio book on BBC Sounds.


I haven't read anything by Sarah Perry before. She has a beautiful way with words and it's made me want to read her fiction.

In this thoughtful and articulate account of the death of her father-in-law, David, she examines the experience from different angles.

Some of the moments that stood out to me most were the family love, the admin of dying, the kinship (in Sarah's words) of the carers and the detachment of the doctor who completed the Respect form with David and Sarah:
"While the doctor was bland and untroubled as table staff taking an order."
And yet Sarah has so much empathy:
"It was her job to see her patients' wishes identified, notified and carried out. How could she live if she absorbed the sorrow and dismay of every family? And it occurs to me now that perhaps she was really calloused as I've so often said, since a callous will form in soft places that have too often been rubbed sore."

You really come away with a feel of what David was like, a lovely man and, like us all, uniquely extraordinary in his ordinariness:
"All of this* remarkable only because it can never be repeated or retrieved."

*'This' being the things we like and do and think and feel that make us who we are.

[Courtney Johnston]

Currently leading my book of the year chart

Once, when I was told this person or that one had died, I'd think of death as a moment of termination, confined to the last moment when the heart stops and the starved brain fails. I imagined that I'd live, then I would die, my death a brief stop at the end of my sentence. Now I understand that death has a duration and an amplitude, with events as various and strange as those of a life. So though it's not possible for me to say when David began to die, I've fixed on that dreary afternoon by the market square, and think of him now in these terms: that he lived for seventy-seven years, and he died for forty-eight days.

[Dylan Brady · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Lois Jayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, really loved this. A privilege to spend the time (just two days as I could hardly put the book down) with David and his loved ones, and an introduction to Sarah Perry who I will most definitely be reading more of. Recommend!!

[Dace · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMG
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[jo carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touched my heart after the recent death of Mum. A tough read but articulated many of my thoughts and feelings.

[Donna Holland · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply moving read about what happens to the body and spirit as death approaches and finally arrives. It’s a profound read that resonated with me and I know I will reread .

[Fred Culley · Rating 3 out of 5]

As it says on the cover, this is a memoir to an ordinary man (authors father in law) capturing the emotional final weeks of his life after diagnosis with cancer. Beautifully written and a loving tribute to life.

[Joanne McSweeney · Rating 2 out of 5]

I must be a real outlier here but this is a terrible book. I read a lot, but I don't post much, so this tells you I feel strongly this time. The style is weird. As if the author knew she didn't really have much to work with, so she decided to write it in a very odd style. The problem is that this actually distances us from the man who is dying and also makes it all about her. The author acts throughout like a 17 year old girl caught in a situation that is beyond her and not as a woman of a certain age who, like all of us, can see this coming with elderly parents. Anyway, i would not recommend it if you are looking for anything with depth-it simply doesn't have any.

[Liz Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was excellent. It perfectly describes the complexity of feelings when a parent or in-law gets a terminal diagnosis, the sense of powerlessness one often has in dealing with healthcare, and the difficulties of decision making at the end of life. It's very simply written, but every word is well chosen.
When my father died at home of pancreatic cancer, I remember one of the hospice nurses telling me how rare it is now for families to manage this, and that it would be a source of comfort to us all. Nearly 20 years on, it still is. I hope that Sarah and her husband will feel the same.

[Marg Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful tender and compelling account of the final few days (nine actually) Sarah Perry and her husband have with Sarah's father in law, David. It's beautifully rendered and the love that is conveyed in various ways throughout is thoroughly moving. 4.5 ⭐️

[Gearoid MCS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superbly well-written yet...

Death of an Ordinary Man is a book that came to my attention as it was longlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, and being available in paperback, it was easy for me to come by a copy. As an established writer, most readers who know Sarah Perry's work will associate her with literary fiction, and this, the story of her father-in-law’s diagnosis with a terminal illness followed by his rapid decline, is her first work of non-fiction.

First things first, Perry really can write. The best non-fiction should come to life on the page, and Perry can both weave vivid descriptions at will and construct decorative sentences. Specific examples stand out, such as when she describes a moment in Norwich when her father-in-law, David, was walking towards her and her husband, and she understood that there was something seriously wrong with him. At this point in the narrative, she blends local detail (the history of the building where they were standing) and the intensity of her sudden realisation that there was something not quite right with this man that she had known since she was a teenager.

The structure of the book is simple but effective: a short opening section that introduces us to David himself and their small family; a long middle section that deals with his diagnosis and subsequent illness; the aftermath of his death. There are moments from each section that will stay with me, often including her dealings with medics and carers, or the shocking realisation of the finality of his passing.

However, although this was a book I would recommend, there was something about it that kept me at arm's length. It may have been its reflectiveness, philosophising about an event that was deeply personal, or it may have been the aforementioned personal nature of the book. Perhaps I may just prefer a historical narrative or an inspirational life story. Whatever it was, it left me ever so slightly detached at the end.

[Ellie T · Rating 5 out of 5]

What 3 words? Beautiful. Harrowing. Important.

Death of an Ordinary Man was written some years after David's death. It's possible time needed to pass before Sarah Perry could write the story of his last days and her part in them.

Sarah Perry seems to have a wonderful relationship with her father-in-law, who was widowered relatively young. Her husband is his only child. They see David a lot but aren't demonstrative people. Sarah's shocked and horrified when he arrives uncharacteristically late for a meeting with them and she sees, as he approaches, death coming near. David doesn't want to be any bother, but is eventually convinced that he should visit his GP. In most of this tale Sarah Perry's respect for and gratitude to the medical professionals she encounters shines through, this falters only when dealing with GPs who don't deliver the care they should.

David is quickly diagnosed with cancer but things don't seem too bad. They'll have time to do things together and talk. Nine harrowing days later David dies, at home. For those nine days Sarah, her husband and others who love David work together with the professionals and carers to give him the best ending possible, in his own home and without him being messed about with.

My own mother died of cancer many years ago, my mother-in-law last year. I only wish their deaths could have been as loving as David's seems to have been.

[Milly Reynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

I approached this non-fiction with trepidation and I was correct. It was an emotional read but it was a read full of love and dignity as well. David, the author’s father-in-law was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and he died within 9 days. Being in his late 70s he wanted to remain at home and he didn’t want to be messed around with and so his final days were spent in the home he loved with his son, Robert, his daughter-in-law, Sarah, and their two dogs. He remained relatively pain free and more or less had full mental capacity although he admitted that he did get in a muddle sometimes. This book is a record of David’s final days told with honesty by Sarah. She tells of the way that she felt that she was following on the tradition of the women in her past who were the guardians of the dying and she found that she was able to provide the intimate care that David needed, something that she had thought would be uncomfortable. She talks about the frustration of finding late night pharmacies and the kindness of nurses. This is not an overly sentimental book, it is a clear account of the stages of dying as she watches her father-in-law change before her eyes and she explains her own emotional responses and those of her husband. A book that preserves David’s dignity and shows us the honour she felt at being with him in his final days. Rounded up to a 5*

[Lesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s difficult to rate this book as the concept of liked or loved didn’t really apply.
I found it an honest & moving account of the death of the author’s father-in-law, a mere 9 days after his cancer diagnosis.

It deals with the many facets of death in the modern world, emotional, psychological, physical, social, practical, spiritual; some unaltered over centuries, some specific to the time.
It very much takes the stance of death as part of life whilst not minimising any of the shock, grief or suffering it entails.

Perry writes well about death as a process, rather than a binary event, she talks of David as “living for 77 years & dying for 48 days”. She acknowledges that, as one is trying to come to terms with the fact that a much loved individual is dying, one still thinks of their own future after the death.

As a society, death is becoming less of a taboo subject - or maybe reverting to being less of a taboo subject as up until fairly recent times death was more a part of everyday life with most people in the UK dying at home until care became more institutionalised.

As Perry says the sheer improbability of any of us coming into existence means every human life is meaningful. It’s in the everyday realities of life &, as part of that, death that our extraordinary nature is revealed.