Overview

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE 2009 Warm and moving ... quirky and unsentimental The Age As I resigned myself to the fact that the latest Household Guide I'd written would be my last, I conceived in a flash the best idea ever. I rang Nancy and left a message. 'Think of the title,' I said. 'How catchy does The Household Guide to Dying sound?' When Delia Bennet-author and domestic advice columnist-is diagnosed with cancer, she knows it's time to get her house in order. After all, she's got to secure the future for her husband, their two daughters and their five beloved chickens. But as she writes lists and makes plans, questions both large and small creep in. Should she divulge her best culinary secrets? Read her favourite novels one last time? Plan her daughters' far-off weddings? Complicating her dilemma is the matter of the past, and a remote country town where she fled as a pregnant teenager, only to leave broken-hearted eight years later. Researching and writing her final Household Guide, Delia is forced to confront the pieces of herself she left behind. She learns what matters is not the past but the present-that the art of dying is all about truly living. Fresh, witty, deeply moving - and a celebration of love, family and that place we call home - this unforgettable story will surprise and delight the reader until the very last page.

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9780330424806

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Reviews

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)

Author Information

Debra Adelaide is the author of several novels, including The Household Guide to Dying (2008), which was sold around the world, Serpent Dust (1998) and The Hotel Albatross (1995). She is also the editor of several themed collections of fiction and memoirs, including Acts of Dog (2003) and the bestselling Motherlove series (1996-1998). As well as a creative writer she has also been a freelance researcher, editor, book reviewer and literary award judge, and is now associate professor at the University of Technology, Sydney where she teaches creative writing.

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