Book excerpt: Sarah, a free-spirited artist in her late twenties, accepts an assignment from her granduncle, Albert Smithson, to write his memoir. ‘Bertie’ has a crippling terror of death brought about by the agonising death of his father, who was an atheist. He learns that there are three conditions one must attain to die in a peaceful state. At age fifty-four, he has none of them and is determined to achieve them all.