Death of an Ordinary Man

“A quiet masterpiece…Remarkable…Much is laid before us, with great precision: finely tuned metaphors, graceful repetitions. Facts are faced, faults are noted, death and life are seen and held. That is all – and that is truly plenty, this valuable and beautiful account a gift to the reader, grieving or not.” –Amy Bloom, The New York Times Book Review

”[A] deeply tender and generous memoir. Ms. Perry has extended a companionable hand to the reader, with profound sincerity and grace.” –The Wall Street Journal

“This is probably the sanest and most humane book about death that I have ever read. A source of solace to anyone who has ever lost someone, or who plans, one day, to die themselves.” –Lit Hub

“One of the year’s best. Every prosaic detail, observed through a simple, deliberate grace.” -Chicago Tribune

”[Perry’s] first close experience with death gives her a lens with which to view herself, her loved ones, and her community with candor and love. An honest, affecting, eminently relatable account.” –Kirkus

“An extraordinary book. One that slips seamlessly from the metaphysical to the brute realities of the dying body.” –The Sunday Times

“We cannot be but somewhat changed by this remarkable book.” –The Daily Telegraph

“A jewel-like book that is extraordinary in its power to transform the quotidian details of an event that will come for us all into a moving work that speaks to the unique experience of being human.” –Financial Times, Best Books of the Year

“A brilliant meditation on mortality […] this book works its magic through the adamantine detail and quiet lyricism with which it recounts a particular, unrepeatable life.” –Joe Moran, The Guardian

“Sarah Perry’s tender and true account of the last days of her father-inlaw, David, is one of those books it feels like everyone should read.” –Joanne Finney, Good Housekeeping “7 Best Books Out in October”

“I have never read an account of illness, dying, death and grief which is quite as honest, brave, piercing and most of all true.” –Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman

“Haunting, mesmerising, fiercely intelligent and deeply humane.” –Naomi Alderman

“Beautiful and profound and completely gripping.” –Mark Haddon

“I haven’t read a book this honest about living in years. Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man made me slow down. It opens a door into the cadence of a life, familiar but entirely his own, and pulls you into the intimacy of living all the way to the end: the crease in trousers, smears on glasses, the physicality of decline, what’s left in the freezer, the small absurdities that surface in grief. I recognized so much of this from years spent alongside the dying. The dying person is still living; there are still jokes, still routines, still quirks, still things that need doing. Living only gets louder. A stunning portrait of what we notice, and how we care for each other when there is nothing left to fix.” –Alua Arthur

Sarah Perry is the internationally bestselling author of The Essex Serpent, Melmoth, and After Me Comes the Flood. She lives in England.

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