The Household Guide to Dying - Hardcover

Adelaide, Debra

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670068640 ISBN 13: 9780670068647

Publisher: Penguin Group Canada, 2009

Synopsis

A 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.

Inspired by her heroine, Isabella Beeton, Delia has made a living writing a series of hugely successful modern household guides, as well as an acerbic domestic advice column. As the book opens, she is not yet forty, but has only a short time to live.

She is preoccupied with how to prepare herself and her family for death, from writing exhaustive lists to teaching her young daughters how to make a perfect cup of tea. What she needs, more than anything, is a manual – exactly the kind she is the expert at writing. Realising this could be her greatest achievement (for who could be better equipped to write The Household Guide to Dying?) she sets to work. But, in the writing, Delia is forced to confront the ghosts of her past, and the events of fourteen years previously. There is a journey she needs to make, back to the landscape of her past, and one last vital thing she needs to do.

Hugely original, life affirming and humorous, The Household Guide to Dying illuminates love, loss, family and the place we call home.

About this title

Review:

"With "The Household Guide to Dying," Debra Adelaide serves up a tantalizing literary souffle - a beautiful blending of lightness and substance that centers around Delia, as quirky, funny, feisty and brave a character as any in contemporary fiction. I think you'll love this life-affirming novel. I did."
-Wally Lamb, author of "The Hour I First Believed"
"I found this novel entrancing. "The Household Guide to Dying" is a joyous 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, author of "LOTTERY"
"What an uplifting novel. Itas gorgeously written, while also being absolutely page-turning and breathtakingly tender. I adored the character of Delia and was riveted to her story from beginning to lovely and surprising end."
-Cecelia Ahern, author of "PS, I Love You" and "There's No Place Like Here"

About the Author:

Debra Adelaide is the author of two novels which were published in Australia and four themed collections of fiction and memoirs. She 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Group Canada
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0670068640
• ISBN 13: 9780670068647
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 371