The household guide to dying (D. Adelaide)

Debra Adelaide 'The household guide to dying.' 2008.
Picador Australia; Harper Collins (UK).
(To be published 2009 by Penguin USA and Penguin Canada)

Summary
Delia Bennet, on the brink of 40, is happily married with two young daughters, chickens in the backyard, and a career in writing books of household hints. But Delia is dying from cancer. Ever practical and disciplined, she sets out on three missions: to find the girl who received her son's heart after he was killed in a car accident; to plan a future for her family without her; and to write her final book, The Household Guide to Dying.

My comments
I found the great majority of this book tedious and superficial. There is virtually no development in the characters and the narrative is interrupted by a continual to-ing and fro-ing between past and present. When will writers get bored with this device? I thought that the 'extracts' from her advice column distracted from the story, rather than add anything to it; and towards the end of the book, when the writing started to get serious and weighty, they ruined the tone.

Having said all that, I was astonished by the final chapter, which not only stands apart from the rest of the book, but is also some of the best writing about deep emotions that I've ever read.

Two quibbles. First, in the latter third of the book, she seemed to experience little discomfort - let alone pain - from the cancer, despite receiving no treatment. second, Adelaide uses 'perfect' as a comparative adjective ('so perfect', etc.) - yet she's a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at UTS! What is the academy coming to!


1. Debra Adelaide has neither a Wikipedia entry nor a personal website. Try her agent's summary instead:
www.davidhigham.co.uk/html/Clients/Client-647

2. The household guide to dying has no Wikipedia entry. Try her publisher's site:
www.panmacmillan.com.au/picador
(Click on 'Enter site', then use 'Quick search'.)

3. Debra Adelaide was interviewed by Deborah Crabtree for Australian Bookseller and Publisher Magazine:
www.boomerangbooks.com.au/content/authors/ (3rd item down)

4. Recent books by Debra Adelaide
2003 Acts of dog: writers on the divine canine. (Vintage Books Australia; Random House Australia.) An anthology of stories and memoirs.
1998 A Bright and Fiery Troop: Australian women writers of the 19th century. (Penguin Australia.) A collection of essays.
1998 Australian Women Writers: a bibliographic guide. (Pandora, London.)
1998 Serpent dust. (Vintage.) Concerns the smallpox epidemic that ravaged Sydney's Eora people during the first two years of white 'settlement'.
1998 Cutting the cord: stories of children, love and loss. (Random House Australia.) A sequel to the Motherlove anthologies. How do you let go of children as they grow up or, in the most tragic cases, when they die?
1997 Motherlove 2: more stories about births, babies and beyond. (Random House Australia.) A second anthology about motherhood.
1996 Motherlove: stories about births, babies & beyond. (Random House Australia.) An anthology about motherhood.
1995 The Hotel Albatross. (Random House Australia.) About a time when Adelaide cooked meals and tried to fend off disaster in a country hotel.

7. Debra Adelaide's publishers
Picador Australia. A Pan Macmillan Australia imprint; others include Pan, Macmillan, St. Martins Press and Sidgwick & Jackson. Part of The Macmillan Group, owned by German multinational Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.
Harper Collins. Owned by News Corporation. Over 30 imprints, mostly in USA.
Vintage Books. Owned by Random House, itself owned by German multinational Bertelsmann AG. Publishes p/back versions of books by Random House imprints such as Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus, Hutchinson, William Heinemann, Secker & Warburg.
Penguin Books. Part of The Penguin Group, owned by Pearson plc. Penguin imprints include Viking, Puffin, Rough Guides and Dorling Kindersley.
Pandora. Possibly part of Unwin Hyman, now part of Taylor & Frances.