Sarah Perry’s father-in-law, David, died nine days after his cancer diagnosis, at the age of seventy-seven. And while he had expected to live longer – ‘I didn’t think it would be so soon,’ he remarks, levelly, on diagnosis – on the whole, that doesn’t sound too bad. No long, drawn-out illness; not much time to dread what is coming; just the one clear call. It might almost be enviable. Ultimately, we are told that death will come to us all – though few of us are quite ready to believe it.

Death of an Ordinary Man opens with Perry recounting a day that’s fit for eternity. What would be the perfect meal, if you knew you were going to die soon? Less than two months before David’s death, when he does not know how short a time he has left, he eats just such a meal: fish and chips on the seafront at Great Yarmouth; a bag of scalding hot doughnuts out of a paper bag. He is with Perry and her husband – his son: ‘the day was fine, the shining tide was going out.’

Perry is good at evoking somebody who is able to enjoy himself easily, who rubs the cinnamon sugar off his hands and pronounces the doughnuts ‘excellent … that was excellent’. This is the common prescription for those who face impending death: to make the most of one’s remaining time, to