"It's not easy to account for what makes this book so special. Its main character is as unpromisingly ordinary as its title suggests, and some may even find him a little boring. David Perry is the kind of man who spends hours sorting his beloved stamp collection into albums with the aid of long-tipped forceps and magnifying glasses, or filling in his Sudoku puzzle books, or reading the latest copy of the Antiques Gazette, looking intently at porcelain dogs and chased silver punch-bowls."
"He has lived the uneventful, comfortable life of an upwardly-mobile baby boomer born at the end of the second world war. He spends most of that life in Basildon, while commuting on the Fenchurch Street line to work as an industrial chemist. On family holidays in Yarmouth, he sets his deckchair 3ft from the sea but never goes in it. Not much to cloud his days, then, apart from caring for a disabled wife who dies 10 years before him."
David Perry fell ill after a holiday in Great Yarmouth and died of oesophageal cancer in 2022 less than two months later, only nine days after diagnosis. He led an uneventful, comfortable life, commuting from Basildon to work as an industrial chemist. His days were shaped by careful routines and small pleasures: sorting stamps with forceps, filling Sudoku books, reading the Antiques Gazette, eating cereal before bed, hoarding Wagon Wheels and calling artificial sweeteners 'depth charges.' He cared for a disabled wife who predeceased him by ten years, downsized to a Norwich bungalow, died at 77 and maintained a clenched English male reserve, greeting his son with a handshake.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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