The Household Guide to Dying

by Debra Adelaide

*This is an Advanced Readers Copy*

The Household Guide to Dying is a moving, witty, and uplifting novel about Delia, who writes an acerbic and wildly popular household advice column. When Delia realizes that she is losing her long battle with cancer, she decides to organize her remaining months-and her husband and children's future lives without her-the same way she has always ordered their household. Unlike the many faithful readers of her advice column-people who are rendered lost and confused when faced with dirty shirt collars-Delia knows just what to do. She will leave a list for her daughter's future wedding; fill the freezer with homemade sausages, stews, and sauces; and even (maddeningly) offer her husband suggestions for a new wife. She'll compile a lifetime's worth of advice for her children, and she'll even write the ultimate "Household Guide to Dying" for her fans. There is one item on her list, however, that proves too much even for "Dear Delia," and it is the single greatest task she had set for herself. Yet just as Delia is coming to terms with this, an unexpected visitor helps her believe in her life's worth in a way that no list ever could.

Imbued with Delia's love for food, Jane Austen, clucking hens, and fragrant gardens, and interspersed with her secrets to making a pot of tea, removing wine stains from lace, and the ingredients to the perfect wedding cake, this is a gorgeously crafted novel that captures the reader-heart and mind-and expands our understanding of a meaningful life.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Chick Lit, Audiobook, Book Club, Death, Drama

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Debra Adelaide has worked as a researcher, editor, and book reviewer, and has a PhD from the University of Sydney. She is presently a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Technology, Sydney, where she lives with her husband and three children.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debra_Ad...

Reviews

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't let the title fool you, or at least read the whole title, which continues "a novel about life". Because that's certainly what it is. The main character, Delia, is an advice columnist for domestic stuff, as well as a writer of several books based on a modern and cheeky interpretation of the 1861 classic "Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management". She also happens to be a mother with a loving husband, two young daughters, and end-stage cancer. She figures that her final book should be, in fact, how to manage a household dealing with death. She's flippant, upbeat, well read and extremely funny
while dealing with enormous issues head-on (mostly) and unflinchingly. The book moves around in time a bit, back and forth between 17 year old Delia who was making her way in the world as an unwed teenage mother in a small town and the current organized,
irreverent, dying-in-as-practical-way-as-she-can Delia. The scope and generosity of her story is difficult to pull away from--there are quiet insights throughout the book that sneak up on you in unexpected ways but hit you like a hammer. It's a charming and ultimately hopeful story that I sincerely gets a lot of attention--it deserves it.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The first thing I did this morning was visit the chickens.’

Delia Bennet, wife and mother aged 39, is dying. Between now, and then, there is a lot Delia wants to accomplish. She has her lists of things to do, her loose ends to tie up, her planning for her husband and daughters once she is dead. Delia is also writing her final book: ‘The Household Guide to Dying’, the last in a Household Guide series which has included the Garden, Home Maintenance, Kitchen and Laundry. She will address themes such as Palliative Care, Funeral Festivities and Wills and Wishes. She won’t, lacking the necessary experience, address the afterlife.

‘I could have been lots of things. And yet I had become a dying mother with a book that possibly would never be finished.’

Delia wants to say goodbye to her daughters Daisy and Estelle, to her husband Archie. She wants to prepare them for her death. And it’s hard: balancing what Delia thinks their needs will be in the future with their (and her) current needs. How do you prepare for a future that you are no longer an active part of? Delia’s life is rich and layered: her research for her book – including attending an autopsy, her regular column of domestic advice, her family. Delia may be dying, but she’s not sitting around waiting for it to happen.

‘It was natural to want to tie up the dangling threads before you died. These threads had tripped me up too often over the years,’

Delia needs to revisit her past. Her life as a pregnant 17 year old in a Queensland country town called Amethyst. Delia’s two week solo visit to Amethyst is a very special part of this novel: can she find what she is searching for?

‘Death is a condition, but dying is an act, I said. It’s a noun versus a verb.’

I loved this book. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and it made me think. It made me wonder, too, about the fine line between fact and fiction. This novel really appeals to me: it’s the combination of a strong, likeable character, humour, the balance between the important and the mundane.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not enjoy this book. I tried to read it multiple times and found myself unable to make any head way with it until the past weekend when i sat myself down and forced myself to read it, as afterall it was the book chosen for book club and I had to read it.

From the very momment I saw what we would be reading, I had issues with this book. Let me start by saying I'm a very emotional person, and I cry alot when reading a book. So when presented with a book titled The Household Guide to Dying I knew I was in trouble. I don't think it helped that I've lost friends at a young age to cancer, and so many family members in such a short space of time that I am utterly afraid of the word. It terrifies me. And yet I've read so many books based around it, that although I may cry like a baby, it's never affected me this bad.

This book hunted my sleep and not in a good way, it got under my skin and played havoic with my head. I didn't like the protagonist. At all. In fact, I felt for family the whole way through the novel. I cried for them. Not so much because Delia was dying, but because those poor girls were losing their mother, and Achie was watching the love of his life die a slow death. In fact, I'm not so sure the characters in this book are very strong. Maybe it was because of my past, and even the present, but while reading I replaced each character with someone that I knew or had know in that situation and it broke my heart.

In terms of the style and way the book was written I was confused. Too much was withheld for too long. The first part of the book where the author is meant to grip their reader and make them want to read more faster, jsut wasn't there. I was bored. It seemed kind of pointless. Honestly until around the last hundred to one-hundred-and-fifty pages of the book I was willing to give it one star. I did not enjoy it. But for some reason, Adelaide started to win my over slightly in the final pages of the book and I can't work out why unless it was due to sympathy. Delia was dying and she was losing everything and you have to be pretty heartless not to feel for there, and I did feel for her, but I didn't like her.

What I will say however, is that in the end I wanted to give this book 2.5 stars. Because although I didn't like its set up, or its characters necessarily there were momments in the book when I had to pause and think wow. Sometimes it was because I'd never thought much about the comments and subjects raised before, other times because the way Debre Adelaide explained something was simply too beautiful, but in words, imagery and meaning. However, I phsyically felt sick when she made the blood sausage and had to fight the urge not to vomit. That scene was nasty!

Maybe after I've had some time to think about this book, and current situations and personal resemblances have gone one way or another, then maybe the book will get a higher rating. But given my experience reading it, and the strong desire not to read it, I don't think it will be too likely.

[crystalibrary · Rating 1 out of 5]

There needs to be a "stopped-reading" shelf on this website.

I thought this book would be quite a good read, but sadly, not. I could not warm to the main protagonist. I understand that she has a terminal illness, and that gives her dibbs on choosing the music in the car or deciding where her family goes on the weekend, but does anyone really care about the "proper" way to make a cup of tea, or the fact that her mother taught her proper etiquette and ways of the world? I would personally be interested in this (what are the rules again, for using whichever knife and fork and in what order?), but not if it is expressed in the pompous and condesending way that the character explains it- urk.

[Jo Case · Rating 4 out of 5]

Debra Adelaide has toiled away on the mid-list of the Australian literary scene for decades, writing close to a dozen books (two novels among them) along the way. Her latest book, The Household Guide to Dying, marks her entry into the big time. With rights sold internationally for an estimated $A1 million (after a heated bidding war), this novel comes heavy with expectation. And, I’ll admit, I was intensely wary of all the hype. But, nearly 400 pages later, I’m a convert. This is an exceptional book. To borrow a cliché: it will make you laugh and cry.

Delia is dying of breast cancer. She’s had her final (useless) chemotherapy treatment and now she’s winding down, watching the seasons pass for the last time, preparing her family for life after her death. She tells her husband she’d like him to marry his bookkeeper, considers making a wedding cake for her eight-year-old daughter, and fills the freezer with family favourites. As she’s tying up loose ends, she is drawn back to the northern NSW town she landed in as a pregnant single mother-to-be long ago – also the site of a tragic, long-submerged event with which she must make her peace before she can begin letting go of life.

Delia is a wonderful character: an acerbic advice columnist and author of a bestselling series of household guides to the lost domestic arts. (A reviewer describes one of them as “laundry porn”, unintentionally trebling sales.) Intensely practical, she decides to face death by writing her final ‘how to’ book: The Household Guide to Dying. It’s that combination of matronly practicality and unexpected kookiness that makes Delia so endearing, and draws the reader into her predicament so completely.

Similarly, there are two immensely satisfying strands running through the book. The novel is rich in domestic detail: small girls cuddling chickens in bed; Delia’s husband trying to brush plaited hair; ruminations on the rules of clothes-line culture (“Only a disreputable woman would hang out washing later than nine o’clock”). It is also very, very clever – weaving in observations about a plethora of subjects, including words and editing, motherhood and Jane Austen, and what our changing domestic rituals tell us about our culture. But, above all, this beautiful book is a love letter to motherhood and domesticity, with all their complex joys and irritations.

This review was first published in The Big Issue.

[Kay Rollison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delia Bennet is dying, though there doesn’t seem to be a word in the English language that quite covers her situation. After all, we are all dying from the day of our birth. She has cancer and only a few months to live, but although she tires easily and is forgetful, she isn’t sick; she can still function in her roles as wife and mother and writer. She has three aims: to prepare herself, her husband and her two young daughters for her imminent death, to see if she can tie up a loose thread from her earlier life, and to finish the book she is writing – The Household Guide to Dying.

Delia fell into writing household guides almost by accident. She began by writing a home hints column for a local newspaper, and developed a following by giving ‘unusual’, even insulting advice to readers. Some of this is scattered throughout the novel. She now has guides to the kitchen, the laundry, the garden, and home maintenance to her name, and has convinced her editor that there is mileage in a guide to dying – particularly as she is so well qualified in the area. Information from this guide also appears in the novel, as Delia researches things like coffins – or caskets, as she finds they are now called – both for her own use and for the guide book. And she goes back to a small town inQueenslandto try finally to deal with what happened there some fifteen years before.

The story thus takes place in three different time periods; September-October, which is the present; some months earlier when she goes toQueensland; and the time when she lived there. This all sounds a bit confusing, butAdelaidehandles it without a false step. The pieces are fitted together like a patchwork quilt, to use a domestic image.

This is a sad and moving book; it brought tears even to my cynical eyes. Delia’s plight is rarely sentimentalised, and most of her responses ring true. She is a less angry character than she has a right to be, but not unbelievably accepting. And the sadness is balanced by a variety of humour, from the black to the laugh-out-loud. A guide to dying? Think of the potential readership. And the care of shirts? ‘It took a stout feminist to withstand the onslaught of the shirt’. There is also a lot of thoughtful, interesting and amusing comment about housework. ‘Take the washing line, for instance. Here is a site of profound wisdom, generally ignored by men and women alike, despite its centrality to daily life … There has never been an investigation into the true meaning and function of the Hills hoist …’ ‘Like an indigenous language that was no longer spoken’, she says, ‘the lore of household life was rapidly becoming extinct, from descaling kettles to preserving peaches, from the uses for naphthalene to the best method for beer-battering fish’. Adelaideeloquently laments this loss. And it’s not all housework; there are books (including a nice defence of her namesake from Pride and Prejudice) and chickens as well.

There is just one point where I thought there was a danger that Adelaidewas pushing Delia over the top of credible response, but she steadies and gets back on the rails. Some readers might have doubts about whether the ending works successfully, and I’d be interested in other opinions. And just nit picking, I question her interpretation of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861). How did women manage before it? she asks, and applauds Mrs Beeton’s image of the mistress of the house as ‘the Commander of an Army’ marshalling her troops. What she doesn’t say is that Mrs Beeton’s troops were not husband and children, but servants – the cook, the parlour maid or the poor little maid-of-all-work. The wife from the new middle class for whom Mrs Beeton was writing needed to know how these things were done so she could oversee others doing them; not for her the personal pleasures of mopping and ironing – if indeed they are ever pleasures, about which Adelaide doesn’t quite convince me. But no doubt nit picking is dealt with in one of the guides.

link: Read this review at What Book to Read

[Marianne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't believe I made it to the end...

[Kirsten Krauth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing Mothers: Debra Adelaide

(This interview is from my blog, Wild Colonial Girl, at: https://wildcolonialgirl.wordpress.co...)

When I first read The Household Guide to Dying it felt as if the writer, Debra Adelaide, had somehow stepped inside my head for a while and borrowed my voice. Even though at the time I had no daughters, and I certainly wasn’t dying of cancer, the words felt like they were mine: effortless, flowing, perfectly formed, and delivered with precision timing (at certain key points).

There was nothing sentimental about Delia Bennet’s experience of confronting death. It was head on. Even funny. (I got the same tragi-comic feeling reading Sarah Watt’s exquisite contributions to Worse Things Happen at Sea, the memoir she wrote with husband William McInnes, when she was approaching her final days with courage and quiet humour.) Delia plans for the important things. Like how to teach her girls to make the perfect cup of tea. Like whether she is going to fit in her coffin and whether she should practise before the final day comes.

When my aunt died of breast cancer, and I grieved deeply for the loss of a true friend, I turned to Debra’s book often, as a self-help guide — as its title so cleverly predicted I would. Often friends will say ‘I only read nonfiction’, dismissing novels because the words are not true, as if fictional worlds are somehow empty of meaning. But I’ve always found the opposite: fiction frees the writer to explore darker subjects from a number of angles, not often exposed in memoir or autobiography. As a reader, since a child, I have learnt so much about emotions, about how to tackle the big issues of life vs death, from fictional characters I have loved (and Delia is one).

Debra Adelaide is also a mother, and she’s been interested in mothers in various guises. She has edited three collections of stories about mothering — Motherlove, Motherlove 2 and Cutting the Cord — with stories from many well-known authors.

I spoke to Debra about her experience of balancing the writing life with having children.

When you were pregnant, what were your expectations regarding having a baby and writing? Were you planning to write after the baby was born?

DA: My expectations were completely and totally unrealistic. I’d been told that new babies just slept all the time, so I planned accordingly. With my first pregnancy I was still researching my doctorate, which I submitted when my baby was five months old. I had completed all the research by the time he was born and was planning to finalise writing up the material after the birth. With the second and the third babies, I had finished drafts of novels while pregnant, and managed to complete revisions before each birth to free myself up — for a while.

What was it like in reality? Did you get any writing done in the first year after your baby was born?

DA: Of course, working on anything took a lot longer than I imagined, especially after the first birth, and it was not just a matter of constraints on time and sleep deprivation. I had completely failed to factor in one vital thing — my desire to sit and gaze at my baby. I had simply no idea how much time I would be spending just being this baby’s mother, and that was as much physical as it was emotional. And I had no understanding before the event that I would desire this more than anything — more than wanting to read or write, I found I just wanted to sit with him, play with him, sing to him, gaze into his beautiful eyes, wait to catch the first smile, and so on. Obviously I was much more prepared for this with the other two, and less expectant that I would get other, writing, work done.

Did you find it difficult to sit down and write? Or was it the opposite? Were you more creative, as you had less time, and had to be super disciplined?

DA: I became extremely disciplined. My writing/working days were totally focused. Sometimes I was like a general on operations. For the first time I learned to use small pockets of time, like an hour when the children slept. Previously I could work hard but I always felt I needed an entire day to focus on a project. I also began to work at night, often very late at night. And I started to write creatively when I was pregnant with my second child. In fact, I decided to write the novel The Hotel Albatross the day before I went into labour with her.

Did you find the experience of motherhood starting to seep into your characters? Into the way you portray people?

DA: Seep is not quite the right word. Since becoming a mother changed everything about me, it also changed my writing. But I’m not conscious that my characters were particularly defined by any of this unless of course they happened to be mothers. But I didn’t create mother characters for a long time, not until I had the idea for the novel that became The Household Guide to Dying.

Have you written about any mothers in your fiction before or after the birth? Did having a child mean you had to go back and rewrite or change characterisation? Do you approach the writing of mother characters any differently from other characters?

DA: My awareness of how little mothers had written about their experiences of birth, babies, children and so on, led me to edit three collections on the topic, Motherlove, Motherlove 2 and Cutting the Cord. However I wasn’t conscious of this experience affecting my fiction until I wrote The Household Guide to Dying, which, among other things, is deeply informed by a mother’s sensibility, especially in relation to how that mother imagines her family coping after she is dead. There are parts of that novel I expect I could not have written without the experience of being a mother myself. And, interestingly, I always thought the novel was about dying, and books, and poetry, and gardens, and all sorts of stuff, whereas other readers see it as essentially about mothering; one reviewer said it created a ‘poetics of mothering’, something I quite like, though I don’t pretend fully to understand what that means.

I haven’t changed anything about characters because of having children of my own, but on the other hand it is more than likely that I’ve avoided writing about certain things because of the fact. I am not conscious that creating a mother character requires anything special, different, from any other sort of character, but of course one cannot avoid what one understands or knows or apprehends.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very pleasant novel and quite an enjoyable read. It is pretty much completely seen from the point of view of the main character Delia Bennet, so one would have to enjoy her character to enjoy the book. The basic storyline is the last months of a woman who knows that she is dying of cancer, her coping mechanisms her family and so on. It might have dragged a little but the author cleverly wove together subplots from the past - initially as flashbacks but coming together with the main timeline at the end. Also there are little snippets of a ‘household hints’ column that the main character writes that liven things up nicely. I especially enjoyed the settings having lived both in Sydney and on the Atherton Tablelands; the two major sites of the story.

Initially I was disappointed with this book, my fault. I think I had read so many glowing reviews that I expected something extraordinary where it is simply a pleasant novel.

However I can always find something to criticise so here goes; there are several references to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Delia is meant to be an avid reader of Jane Austen, so enthusiastic that she names her chickens after the Miss Bennets yet on page 60 she thinks “I don’t think even Jane, of all the daughters managed decent piano playing...” Wtf? Surely anyone who has actually read Pride and Prejudice would be perfectly well aware that two of the daughters (Lizzie and Mary) played piano, and well enough to perform in public - it is a major plot builder. Whatever were you thinking when you wrote that Debra?

And the ending. MAJOR SPOILER
In the end Delia dies gently and happily at home in the bosom of her loving family, there are lots of references to her body shutting down, surrendering, ect. It all sounds so idyllic a way of dying, and it is meant to be an upbeat book so I can see why she did that. Nonetheless it bothers me because in my experience there is nothing gentle, calm and serene about a person dying of metastatic cancer, not for the person dying, and not for the family. You don’t drift calmly away free of pain in your bedroom at home looking lovingly at your gathered family. Maybe the occasional person. One in a hundred maybe. For the most part it is a drawn out, painful, traumatising and terrifying experience. So I really hope this book does not plant too many expectations in people that this is what it is going to be like for them or their loved ones.

[Amanda Rosso · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this. Harrowing, confronting and wry in equal measures. A most beautiful perspective in the strong telling of a confronting end of living story. A wonderful 'how to' guide. Couldn't get into it at the start (lots of personal resistance methinks) but just goes to show you how it's worth continuing especially with difficult reads.

[Yorkshireteajenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dreadful. Awful. I agree - can we have a stopped reading shelf please!

[Louise · Rating 2 out of 5]

A highly unusual book with its engaging narrative including quirky interludes between a household advisor and her readers.

When the household advisor, who is also dying, begins writing a guide to dying, things really begin to get interesting. There is commendable input about what to consider when a loved one is dying and naturally an emphasis on the concept of grief.

There were however some descriptions of the household advisor's research for the book that dismayed me and marred my enjoyment of the novel as a whole.

2.5 stars

[L3nda · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was BRUTAL. My guts are strewn all over. Ughhh it was so good but if you aren’t comfortable with death or recently lost someone maybe wait a while. I do feel like it gave me some good perspective and ideas as my MD constantly has me wondering how to leave well—to leave my family with love after I’m gone if I do die sooner than later. 🖤

[Melanie Worth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goosebumps. Lovely. xo

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an easy interesting read.
The main character is dying and the stories tells her life story from various perspectives of her past and present. Also, how she is preparing for her imminent death.
It's about her relationships and how she's lived her life and come to terms or not with it.
There were some parts that were a bit repetitious. Some parts just didn't particularly resonate with me.
I liked it because it was an Australian story. There many times when I totally identifyied with the emotions of the characters.

[Tricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

** spoiler alert **

Delia, popular advice columnist and author of a series of household guides, is told she has incurable cancer. She decides to write "The Household's guide to Dying" as she prepares for the end. In between making lists for her two girls that she will not see grow up she heads to a town from her past determined to get closure. She left town when her son was killed in an accident and donated his heart to a young girl. Delia is determined to track her down.

There were some humorous aspects of the book, particularly the battles with the neighbour (culminating with her sowing "Eternity" into his front lawn) and the advice she provides as part of her column.

I think that I read this book at an interesting time. In fact while I was reading the book I went to a funeral and a friend was told that her cancer was incurable. The book certainly gave me a bit to think about given the two events that happened while I was reading it.

[Cate Ellink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially this book made me laugh, it struck so many familiar notes. Then I had a bit of a lull where it annoyed and frustrated me. And then it made me cry. So I don't know how to rate or review it...but because it struck s many chords, it must have been good, very good.

Some quotes that I loved-
It took a stout feminist to withstand the onslaught of the shirt.

I could admit now that the perfect husband resembled a wife.

Only a dysfunctional household left pegs on the line.

...a child for whom arrival was nothing compared with the joys of the journey.

(in a small town) They cared, yet they also left you alone.

Or what about his glorious cock, its satiny folds when at rest, the smooth tip that remained like silken velvet despite years and years of friction?

How much I love them, and yet how much I desire to be free.

Death is a poetic moment.

[Banafsheh Serov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author of 'how to do' books & domestic columnist Delia Bennett is dying of cancer. Before she dies, Delia wants to put her household together by compiling a guide book on it – her last one.

Before she can complete her list, Delia needs to go back to the small country town in the Queensland where she followed her boyfriend as a pregnant teenager and fled from 8 years later after a tragic accident.

This story partly blends facts and fiction. Adelaide's own son suffered from Leukemia while she wrote this book. She has drawn from those experiences in her description of Delia's illness and the grief of helplessly watching your loved one's last grips to life.

This book will suite those who have enjoyed 'The Memory keeper’s daughter' and 'My sister's keeper'.

[Chel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I stuck with this book because I was on holidays and in a generous mood! Domestic goddess? I don't think so! I found Delia's story tedious with a chic lit theme (grrr!Heartily sick of this 'genre').

I know many have raved over this book - was it because she talked about the taboo subject of death and dying? The many strange things she obsessed about, such as making blood sausages with her own blood, descriptions about autopsy, in my opinion were sensationalism and hardly worthy of note.

The storyline was mundane, predictable and I didn't engage with the writer or her characters at all.

I rated it Ok, but I would not read it again.

Still amazed that I stuck with the book to the end, but I think curiousity got the better of me. I wanted to see what everyone was raving about.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, confronting and sad. This novel demands your attention, it asks you to reflect and maybe even sneakingly cordons you to think about your own ending. What is life and what is death? It is blunt, yet amusing and surprising in many ways.

[Minni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blaah, tämä jäi kesken. Ei vaan jaksanutkaan kiinnostua kuolemaa tekevän äidin viimeisistä tekosista ja jatkuvasta listojen laadinnasta. Ehkä seuraavassa elämässä...

[Alison Petchell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn’t like it, never finished it.

[Louise Wigg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really nice story with some lovely characters. Loved the Australian-ness of the story.

[Mary-Lou Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some beautiful moments and ideas. I did shed a few tears at the end.

[Melanie King · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't really know how I feel about this book. At times I felt my eyes start to tear. As a mother myself to 3 young daughters, I could feel Delia's same emotions. The thought of leaving them almost too much to bear. The added story of her first child, Sonny, and how he died was heartfelt in a way you didn't know was an added emotional bonus to the story. As someone who works in the death care industry. I was insulted by the writing of the funeral home workers. I felt the author implied that people are weird to even think of working in death care and didn't do enough research to know that we work in death care to ease pain. To help those on what may very well be the worst day of their life having lost a loved one.
I found the storyline of Pearl and having to meet with her one last time unnecessary. Don't even get me started on the circus aspect. Talk about a useless storyline.
Finally reconnecting with her son's heart transparent recipient was such a minescule section. It felt rushed and an afterthought.
Then there's the part of making blood sausages with her own blood to feed to her family. The thought and description of her husband's penis while she's dying. What the actual F was that all about. Why the hell did the author think those necessary aspects to this story. What otherwise was an emotional journey that makes the reader take stock of their own life. Was ruined by those disgusting story points.

[アマチュア読者 · Rating 5 out of 5]

是種倒吃甘蔗的好看，還思考著這些來信專欄和食譜、園藝、草坪、雞隻到底有什麼關係，後頭卻一口氣將讀者泡到故事裡，像曬襯衫那樣「唰！」地甩了一下舒展開來。

因為太喜歡主角，真希望我手上拿著的是<死亡居家指南>，但很可惜，台灣出版社選擇了一個比要容易打入市場的書名。

故事後面埋的那個引信也燃燒得很漂亮，在一點懸疑和不安中，完美地爆炸。

主角為<傲慢與偏見>的班奈特太太的辯護十分有趣，將雞隻命名為書中人物的行為也很可愛。


p.81
這就是為什麼我讀那麼多書，因為進入書中人物的困境或問題或夢魘，比處理或解決自己的事情來得容易。

p.96
出版商是奇怪的野獸，書是他們賴以生存、呼吸、思考、處理的全部重心，大概連睡覺也帶著書。他們賣書賺大錢，但本身卻不看書。南茜的出版事業以雜誌為重，這代表文字（整頁、整本的文字）只是像狡猾的魚一樣溜過整個體系。文字只是創造需求或銷售產品的方式，對於南茜的團隊而言，其創造性和啟發性就跟野生鯉魚所能帶來的差不多。要是有可能，他們會把文字連根拔除。南茜雖然不同（她喜歡書籍和閱讀），但她仍是這家出版社的主要經營者，守住利潤就跟一行行的文字一樣重要。她一直提醒我，我們大多數的讀者也是不閱讀的：他們只是盯著那些字，因此出版提案要寫得鏗鏘有力，她會拿給行銷經理（這個人之前是待在橄欖球業的）、財務顧問（之前是甜甜圈連鎖店的老闆）以及公關（之前在化妝品公司上班）等人過目。寫一頁。少於一頁。半夜就好，跟章節概述差不多。

p.127
這種諷刺緊緊攫住我，不過諷刺一詞還是如此單薄、不貼切、可鄙，不足以形容這種感覺。一定還有其他字眼，但我滿架的字典和同義辭典、我對任何有脈絡可循的詞彙的熱情、單字本身的熱情、字彙癖、對新詞的狂熱、對填字遊戲和難詞解析書籍的喜愛，在這裡都派不上用場。碰到這個題目還是詞窮了！我，一個專業審稿員，以讀字典為樂的人，曾孤獨地住在拖車裡什麼書都讀，而開始覺得自己像女神，能讓文字活過來的新媽媽。一個知道「營巢」和「囅然」是什麼意思、不會把「羸」、「搿」、「宭」與「贏」、「掰」、「窘」搞混、可以隨時用上「潮解性」和「鏤彩摛文」等詞彙的人，而且絲毫不引以為恥。一位詞藻十足華麗並以此為榮的作者。當邁向死亡的感覺其實像活著時，當衰敗、腐壞、疾病如此激烈又尖銳地集中在你身上，彷彿剩餘的每個日子都像在雕刻刀刃上努力求得平衡時，能夠捕捉這個過程的字眼就算存在，我也找不到。
我覺得一本《死亡居家指南》的作者有責任找出正確的字眼。我希望書的開頭是對於死亡的正面思維，來一個勇敢的動詞會很有幫助。一個好名詞也很不錯。這個名詞不是病人，不是住院醫師，不是顧客、個案、申請人。這些多少都相關，但沒有一個非常正確。

p.274
當我開始排斥明知完美的文學作品時，才發現問題不是出在書籍，也不是作者，而是讀者，我。我內心的讀者正在鬆開，像線軸釋出線。讀者原本是我，現在再也不是了。
如果我過去一直不承認死亡逐漸逼近，以上的事實也足以讓我相信死期的確不遠。我一輩子都在讀書，閱讀是我唯一覺得十分滿足的事情。現在，我沒辦法閱讀，話雖如此，我還是忍不住要找出最佳的臨終書籍。




p.115 處方簽→箋

p.154 死屍歐→喔

[Ms Eclectic · Rating 5 out of 5]

From me, this story gets five stars. I picked it up at an op shop a few years ago, but was only just in the mood to read it this week. This will sound odd, but I really appreciate books about dying, or about losing a loved one. It’s such a terrifying and unknowable topic, yet inevitable. This way of approaching death is soft and kind, helping me see that while it is hard, it is possible to get through and that it even has its beauty.


This book was instantly engaging and enveloping in a way that has been hard for me to achieve of late. While initially wary of a perfect homemaker, I quickly fell in love with Delia and her acerbic wit, terrible advice and streams of conscious style of communicating - drifting into the past and then to the present, or the future that would be without her, without warning. I felt deeply for her, and her family, and the mystery in the novel was fascinating and devastating. The novel navigates difficult subjects without being glib or saccharine but with gentleness and empathy. And humour.


The story is not perfectly written, but I think that is more true for the last page or so than the rest of the book. That said, it by no means ruined my enjoyment of the novel or was a cheat ending, I just thought it could have been tightened a little.

[Silvia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro toccante. Difficile raccontare la trama senza fare spoiler, quindi parlerò della struttura del racconto che non è assolutamente lineare, ma questo non ha pregiudicato per me il coinvolgimento. Le vicende narrate iniziano in un giorno di ottobre e poi spaziano nel passato recente e remoto a balzi, di capitolo in capitolo, a volte di paragrafo in paragrafo, per ritornare allo stesso giorno di ottobre. Il racconto così diventa disordinato nel tempo, ma acquista un particolare valorenarrativo. La storia è raccontata in prima persona dalla protagonista Delia, una scrittrice di guide pratiche e (o ex) correttrice di bozze. Ci parla della sua vita, della famiglia, ci propone riflessioni profonde con una sottile ironia anche nei momenti più bui del racconto.
Ho dato il punteggio massimo perché, senza accorgermene, ho fatto una rilettura e me ne sono resa conto dopo alcuni capitoli, tuttavia non ho abbandonato il volume perché il racconto mi aveva avvinto come la prima volta e credo per questo fatto di averlo apprezzato di più.
Concludo riportando la frase che c'è sul retro della mia edizione:"Vi innamorerete di questo inno alla vita".

[Angela Davidson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not for me.

If I'm honest, the only reason I finished this book was because it was a Book Club assigned read.

I could neither relate nor empathise with the main character and her choices in life, which I think was a big part of why I didn't particularly like the book.

The book jumps about between past and present which, in this instance, I found a little frustrating (probably because I was more interested in the past story than the present one so didn't like being pulled back to it).

There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the writing - I think Debra Adelaide has done a fine job - the story itself just wasn't for me.

I listened to the Audio version of this book and thought the narrator well suited to tell the story.

Am I glad I read it - could have lived without it
Was it a waste of my time - probably wouldn't go quite that far - wasn't a terrible book, just not to my taste
Would I sit down and read it all over again - no, absolutely not
Would I read more by this author based on this book - I might consider reading something else to give her a fair chance before discounting her as an author for me.

[Di · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delia is the author of a popular series of "Household guides to..." and writes an advice column. She is married to Archie and has two young daughters, Daisy and Estelle. When she is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer she determines to use her remaining time as constructively as possible and to document the process of dying in her final book, the Household guide to dying.

The novel includes excerpts from the up-coming book as well as snippets from her advice columns. The latter are supposed to be witty, but I didn't find them so. As she researches the Guide she confronts issues from her past and tries to come to terms with what matters most to her.

The most moving parts for me related to her early life as a pregnant teenage mother when she fled to a remote country town and the tragedy that ensued. The excerpts from the Guide were interesting.


I found the book quite easy to put down