The Smallest Things

* A moving memoir for readers of family stories such as Fathers by Sam Miller or Where Memories Go by Sally Magnusson.; * Will appeal to mid-life and older readers, asking us to reflect on family, heritage and identity in the modern world.; * PR will focus on ongoing debates about elderly care and ageing.; * Nick Duerden is an eloquent writer on the family, health and popular culture whose work appears regularly in the national press.

A poignant memoir that asks us all to appreciate the older people in our livesIt is easy to take for granted the things that are always around us, the people who are always there. And yet they often hold the keys to who we really are.; Nick Duerden's grandparents were always just . . . there. A mysterious yet unchanging presence, a source of dutiful visits, birthday cards and carefully preserved rituals: lunches, dinners and endless card games. ; But, as he enters midlife, and his 98-year-old grandmother enters a care home, he realises that, like so many of us, he should perhaps have paid more attention to her true worth years before.; As Nick goes in search of the secrets his late mother took to the grave, he finds it can be the smallest things that keep us together when so much is left unspoken. This is a memoir of the tiny dramas that fill all our lives, and a celebration of the special ties that can bind two intimately connected strangers. Tender and poignant, it captures the richness, and also the complexity, of family life.