Customer Reviews

The Household Guide to Dying

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Not a stranger to loss, having been thru sudden, long term illness, and tragic deaths, I chose this book to open my heart and enhance my understanding. It is a novel of a household guide writer's final days facing the end as she succumbs to a losing battle with cancer.
The book goes from the ridiculous...Delia's household books and advice for example. To the...
Bizarre and I might add craziness...of watching a live (no pun intended) autopsy; witnessing the extraction of a loved one's heart; getting a casket made of rough hewn and cratelike materials to place on her porch for what seems like months before her 'passing' so her young daughters can decorate with drawings etc, her husband too; making blood sausage out of her own blood to leave for her unwitting family to devour after she is gone to have a part of her within them etc.
To the poignant...the search for something...closure, acceptance, reassurance, reconnection to her lost son; and the ultimate end when the focus becomes more real and understandable.
Her husband, Archie, is a prince of a man, and her children, well, they behave like children.
While I will not most likely forget this book, I would not have chosen it had I known its contents.
The final pages did reinforce my own personal convictions...to try to live life to its fullest, appreciate the smallest and most valuable blessings and embrace the ones I love and care for.

Delia Bennett is dying of cancer. She is a daughter, wife, mother, writer, domestic goddess, and an advice columnist. We see the world through her eyes as she accepts the end. She is even writing a manual entitled, "The Household Guide to Dying." She struggles with how to say goodbye to everyone and what she can leave behind for them.

Delia does not feel sorry for herself, in fact, she keeps up her every day life and goes on as though nothing unusual is happening to her and/or her family. She continues to write her advice column which we get to read from the people who write to her and her responses. We get to follow along as she writes her last book about dying. Delia is a very likeable and unusual protagonist.

Since Delia is a bibliophile; therefore, there are many literary references in this book. Many Jane Austen references are made and the death poet, John Donne, has his fair share. This book is wonderfully well written and should touch every reader in one way or another. Even if it's not the way you would want to go out of this world, you will be abel to appreciate it as Delia's way. This is a very touching and moving book.

Ultimately, I think this author just wasn't for me. I felt like she spent such an exhaustive time detailing small incidents and moments that I began to wonder if she was just light on plot. I'm all for a solid chronicle, but good lord this was extreme. I didn't find Delia (the main character) very interesting, and at times she came off a bit wooden, and I could see the puppet-strings a bit too much. A book like this, focusing on a dying protaganist, relies so heavily on that character being interesting, that I felt like it just tanked the entire book for Delia to be so bland.

I wanted to like this book, I really did - the cover and jacket gave me a "Tuesdays with Morrie" feel. But it was a disappointment - hard to get through, slow, and sometimes, confusing. I didn't feel any sympathy for Delia - she didn't come off as very, well, human. The side characters felt much more real but there were far too little of them. I read and read and tried to get through as much as I could but by the time I got to the blood sausage thing I skipped to the last page and closed to the book. Good thing I got it from the library, this would have been an even more frustrating read if I had spent money on it.

I loved this book. Don't be put off by the title. This novel is about holding on to life with both hands. The fact that the main character, Delia Bennet is dying only serves to show her what is really important in her life. As a writer of a domestic advice column, she's used to telling others how to solve their problems, no matter how small. Delia is a capable woman whose columns are full of black humor. When 'mother of the bride' writes back to her complaining that she's still not happy with the wedding cake recipe Delia has supplied she responds "Life is short. Take risks. How much brandy did you use?"

Now she must turn her wisdom and wit to preparing her husband, daughters and chickens for life beyond her death. She also makes one last effort to help a cranky old neighbor who still hasn't accepted his wife's death many years ago. Delia sneaks out in the middle of the night to plant his front lawn with a message in clover seeds that will burst forth weeks later.

In a Faulkneresque scene, Delia tries out the coffin she has asked her daughters and husband to decorate for her and there's a surprise on the inside for the woman who would always rather be reading. While I did shed tears, this is not a sad story, it's funny and moving and sometimes wicked in its portrayal of life in the green and leafy suburbs of Sydney and further north where Delia must travel to confront a tragedy from her youth.

And by the time you finish the book, you will know the secret to making the perfect soft-boiled egg.
This novel is Debra Adelaide's, third and her best so far. Highly recommended!

It is in my opinion a highly romanticized idea of what it is like to face the end of ones life. To get affairs in order, to say good bye. It is a well written book, but I really couldn't sympathize with the protagonist, and some of the book was just plain odd. Pick out caskets yes, go to an autopsy, no. Put your own blood into food for your family.....that passed odd and went straight to bizarre.

There is such a thing as too many descriptive details and this book has far exceeded that. This book took work for me to get through. I don't need an entire chapter devoted to describing a relationship with a chicken. A paragraph would have sufficed.

The protagonist's unpredictable and outrageous emotion-driven actions in the story seemed very inconsistent with the task-oriented, sophisticated "Perfect Paula" impression given in the book advertisement. This book was not what I was expecting based on the description, in other words.

I didn't have any unique lasting impressions after reading this book; for me it was not an enjoyable read, so I feel as though I wasted my time with this read. This will not be a book that withstands the test of time. All that said I did finish the book, mostly because by the end I was curious to see how the plot got wrapped up. I suppose there is something to be said for that.

I just couldn't get into this book, and actually skimmed through the last half. It just went on and on about nothing really and it didn't flow together either. It skipped back and forth between the past and present with no real cohesion. The highlight of the book were the little blurbs to "Dear Delia" at the end of each chapter. Although, again, they were just randomly stuck in.

In choosing this novel, is sounded like it would be a funny and quirky story with a twist; the main character is dying. However, this story is much more than that. The dying homemaker Delia is so much more than a homemaker. She is an author, daughter, lover, wife, neighbor and mother, and all these roles are explored in this novel.

The novel starts in media res; Delia has already had a double mastectomy and knows her ultimate fate. She will not survive this cancer battle. Thus armed with this knowledge, the eccentric Delia sets forth to prepare her children husband, editor, readers, even her neighbor, for what the future holds. Delia decides to write a guide for dying to go along with her other homemaking guides, that sprung from her amusing advice column. She has the full support of her editor, Nancy.

Delia also has a past; she was a teenage unwed mother. She decides to return to the town she and her present husband formerly lived in and to revisit some life changing events brought on by that past. I do not want to give anything away, because the author so carefully crafts these moments to be surprises for the reader.

Let me just say that this was an incredibly well crafted story. I was honestly surprised at the story author Debra Adelaide weaves. I found myself moved to tears several times. The last chapter was also a surprise. I worried how the author would wrap up the novel, but she did an excellent job.

I would highly recommend this book.

Delia Bennet, author of a successful Household Guide series on everything from gardens to laundry, seems to have all the answers: from descaling the kettle, regrouting the bathroom, the uses of naphthalene, the best recipe for wedding cake and any kind of stain removal.

Until she's diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly, thinking about how her family will get by when she's gone, she starts thinking about and what they'll eat when she's gone (including a very personal blood sausage) and her young daughters' weddings to the best outfit for death and most eco-friendly coffins, she starts a series of lists that will become her final book, The Household Guide to Dying.

But while she prepares for her death, she must also face her past and the heartbreaking secret that she's spent much of her life trying to forget.

Witty, tender, honest and deeply affecting, this is a celebration of the little things that make life worth living: good music, great books, a decent cup of tea. The pleasures of home and heartbreaks of family. And the big questions too: about death, the past, and the best books to read when you're dying.

Unputdownable, unflinching - and unforgettable, like a perfectly baked madeleine. Or is that blood sausage?