Ben Reeves’s debut novel, Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt (2025), is a work of contemporary fiction with elements of magical realism. The story is narrated by a timeless, compassionate personification of Death who goes by the name Travis Smith. His solitary and impartial existence is disrupted when he forms an unexpected bond with a grieving midwife, Dalia, and her two young daughters. This relationship forces him to confront human emotions of love and loss that challenge his eternal, detached role. Taking its title from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five, the book explores themes of Death as Transition, Not Terror; The Illusion of Linear Time; and The Role of Community in Overcoming Grief. The novel was the winner of the 2024 Bath Novel Award, an international prize for emerging novelists.

This guide refers to the 2026 Avid Reader Press hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of child abuse, child death, death by suicide, suicidal ideation and self-harm, animal death, addiction, graphic violence, cursing, and illness or death.

Plot Summary

The narrator, a timeless entity who collects the souls of the dying, begins his story with the death of Samuel Preston, a young man killed in a New Year’s Day car crash. The narrator, who later goes by the name Travis Smith, lives a solitary existence in a small flat, overwhelmed by the constant influx of human life and death. To cope, he meticulously restores old photographs for his neighbors, including a 103-year-old man named Mr. Campbell. 

His quiet life is interrupted by the family across the hall: Dalia, a midwife, and her two young daughters, Layla and Neda. Though Travis initially resists connection, the precocious eight-year-old Layla is determined to befriend him, inviting him into their lives despite his rejections. A stray white cat also begins visiting his flat. As Travis observes and occasionally interacts with the family, he feels an unfamiliar pull of attachment that conflicts with his detached, eternal nature. An interlude in the narrative depicts a doe and her fawn moving through the forest before the fawn is senselessly killed.

Travis’s relationship with Dalia and her children deepens. He and Dalia connect at a community garden, and she finds his quiet presence calming. He babysits the girls one night when Dalia is called into the hospital for work, bonding further with Layla over video games and a shared sense of being outsiders. Interspersed with this growing connection are scenes of Travis visiting a lonely 89-year-old woman who is desperate to die and chides him for keeping her alive. Travis’s emotional conflict intensifies during a moment of deep domestic fantasy as he helps Dalia apply fake blood and scars for Layla’s Halloween costume as a zombie princess. This fragile peace shatters when Layla falls ill at her school disco. At home, Dalia discovers a severe rash on Layla’s body, previously hidden by the teal zombie makeup. 

She rushes her to the hospital, and Travis accompanies them. Layla is diagnosed with bacterial meningitis. Dalia is joined by Layla’s estranged father, Nick, who is recovering from an alcohol addiction. They keep a bedside vigil as Travis remains a constant presence. Layla is diagnosed with bacterial meningitis and dies. Her parents are devastated. Travis collects Layla’s soul and keeps Dalia company in the following weeks, during which she realizes who he is. Travis attempts to comfort her by giving her a shoebox filled with all the photographs Layla took on her personal camera, but his detached assertion that Dalia should move on causes her to sever her relationship with him.

Dalia spirals into a deep depression, numbing her pain with pills stolen from the hospital where she works. She moves out of the apartment building to a new house with her other daughter, Neda, whose father she resents for his more stable, happy life. Her grief culminates on Christmas Day, when she resolves to die by suicide. Travis appears beside her, bound by the ancient rules of his existence to only watch. Enraged by his passivity, Dalia decides not to die yet. From then on, they interact intermittently while Dalia struggles with her depression and Travis confronts the growing emotional impact people’s deaths have on him.

As Travis continues collecting souls, Dalia reconnects with Nick and helps him recover from a relapse in his alcohol addiction. This temporarily allows them both to begin working through their grief; however, their progress fails when Nick accidentally implies that Dalia might’ve been able to save Layla if she’d noticed Layla’s symptoms sooner. This prompts Dalia to admit she blames herself for her daughter’s death. Dalia again attempts to die by suicide, and though Travis attempts to distance himself from her and other humans, he intervenes and asks Nick to go visit her, interrupting her plan.

Nonetheless, Dalia is certain that she will die by suicide. She visits Layla’s grave, as well as that of her brother, Samuel Preston, the character from the first chapter whose death prompted her to move to the apartment building in the first place. She then returns to the various homes she has lived in, reminiscing, before attempting to die by suicide once more, rigging a hose from her car’s exhaust on a remote country road. Travis speaks with her to explain his deep loneliness and, in an unprecedented act, finally pleads with her not to do it rather than watching passively or indirectly intervening. Before progressing the narrative, the story features an interlude about the brief lifecycle of mayflies.

The flash-forwards to an 89-year-old woman are resolved in a final chapter, when she wakes up on her 90th birthday. Her grandson plans a surprise party, which she dislikes until another grandchild appears with their newborn baby, which they’ve named Layla. The woman is revealed as Dalia. She is surrounded by a loving family, including her grown daughter Neda. She has survived, healed, and lived a full life. That night, Travis, appears in a new physical form, but she instantly recognizes him. He gives her a photo album of her life, now filled with Layla’s pictures. They dance before she lays down, and Travis collects her soul.