The Household Guide to Dying
Debra Adelaide

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synopsis

Inspired by her heroine, Isabella Beeton, Delia has made a living writing a series of hugely successful modern household guides. 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 her death, from writing 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.

Debra Adelaide

is the author of two previous novels, The Hotel Albatross and Serpent Dust 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.