The Household Guide to Dying
A Novel About Life
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Now that popular household advice columnist Delia Bennet is dying from cancer, she's compiled the ultimate to-do list: plan her daughter's future wedding, fill the freezer with her family's favorite meals- perhaps even do some matchmaking for her husband.
But just as Delia comes to terms with the impossibility of ever tying every loose thread together in her too-short time, an unexpected visitor helps her believe in her life's worth in a way no list ever could...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Domestic advice columnist Delia is terminally ill, but she has a few loose ends she'd like to wrap up before cancer takes her from her husband and two daughters in Australian novelist Adelaide's ho-hum latest. Though Delia makes lists that encompass everything from the morning routine to planning her daughters' weddings, hoping to control what will come after she is gone, much of what is on her mind is her distant past in the small town of Amethyst, where she lived after she left home at 17 to raise her firstborn. Adelaide metes that portion out slowly, and readers will have figured out the twists long before she gets there. What Delia faces and remembers about her time in Amethyst leaves her better able to face gracefully her own imminent departure, which she chronicles in an advice book. That project leads to some off-kilter scenes (such as Delia observing an autopsy and casket shopping), and though the book ends sweetly, Delia's distant narrative tone and the erratic time line rob the tale of emotional impact.
