IN EXTREMIS

Thomas faces an impossible choice: rush to his dying mother's bedside or honor a commitment to speak at a physiotherapy conference in the Netherlands. As he wrestles with whether he'll arrive in time to say the words left unsaid, his mind fractures under competing pressures—his friend's crumbling marriage, his own separation, and the mundane anxieties that refuse to leave him alone. Tim Parks captures a man caught between duty and desire, presence and absence, in this incisive meditation on mortality and the paralyzing weight of unfinished conversations.