Overview

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…

Full Product Details

9780007281114

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Darkly comic novel with a tone that is Desperate Housewives meets Six Feet Under...this is caustic and hilarious, as well as heart-warming. A clever read that stays with you for a long time' Red 'Adelaide's moving novel captures both the hope and sadness of Delia's plight' Daily Mail 'A novel about loving and grieving...filled with humour, warmth and sadness - just like life' Good Reading 'I found this novel entrancing. The Household guide to Dying is a joyous, irreverent romp of a book that resonates deep inside long after you finish. Delia's magical, crystalline voice made me fervently wish that she was real and that I knew her.' PATRICIA WOOD, Lottery

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)

'Darkly comic novel with a tone that is Desperate Housewives meets Six Feet Under!this is caustic and hilarious, as well as heart-warming. A clever read that stays with you for a long time' Red 'Adelaide's moving novel captures both the hope and sadness of Delia's plight' Daily Mail 'A novel about loving and grieving!filled with humour, warmth and sadness -- just like life' Good Reading 'I found this novel entrancing. The Household guide to Dying is a joyous, irreverent romp of a book that resonates deep inside long after you finish. Delia's magical, crystalline voice made me fervently wish that she was real and that I knew her.' PATRICIA WOOD, Lottery

Author Information

Debra Adelaide has worked as a researcher, editor and book reviewer, and has a PhD from the University of Sydney. She is now a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has three children and several chickens.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available