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...
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