The Household Guide to Dying (Paperback)

Dry meditations on preparing for death and a trip down memory lane preoccupy the cancer-stricken heroine of a reflective, overburdened but not too sentimental story.A mother with a past is about to be snatched away too soon from her devoted husband and female children and needs to leave matters in order, in Australian novelist Adelaide's latest (The Hotel Albatross, 1995, etc.). The central character, Delia, doesn't have much time left and is obsessing about preparing for her young daughters' weddings, while needing to tie up loose ends regarding her own early life and also writing The Household Guide to Dying, the final volume in the Household Guides series related to her domestic-advice column. These jostling strands make for a choppy, sometimes chronologically confusing narrative, further fragmented by flashbacks and glimpses of Delia's professional correspondence. Adelaide's discursive style adds an additional gossipy dimension. However, the story of Delia's teenage pregnancy emerges through the thicket - how her boyfriend abandoned her; how she lived in a caravan, in a small town, as a single parent; how she coped when tragedy struck. Because of her illness, Delia has trouble finishing Household Guide to Dying, but Adelaide succeeds in wrapping things up gracefully.Despite the cluttered scenario and downbeat subject matter, the author's witty, perky tone and insight prevail. (Kirkus Reviews)

Desperate Housewives meets Six Feet Under in this brilliantly moving and darkly comic novel, which charts the attempts of dying heroine Delia - a modern day Mrs Beeton - to prepare her family for the future and lay to rest a ghost from her past. Delia Bennet has made a living writing a series of hugely successful modern household guides, with advice on everything from laundry to lovers. The one thing she hasn't ever given advice on is her own situation: barely forty but dying. To prepare her family, she tries everything from writing lists to teaching her daughters to make the perfect cup of tea. What she really needs is a household guide: the kind she is expert at writing. She sets to work. But the writing forces Delia to confront painful ghosts from her past. there is a journey she needs to make, and one last vital thing she must do...

General

Imprint:	HarperCollinsPublishers
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	2009
Authors:	Debra Adelaide
Dimensions:	198 x 129 x 22mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	384
ISBN-13:	978-0-00-728111-4
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-00-728111-0
Barcode:	9780007281114

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