The Household Guide to Dying: A Novel About Life [Paperback]

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...

INTRODUCTION
A freshly insightful, hopeful, and dramatic novel full of heart and life—told from the perspective of a household advice columnist, wife, and mother who is determined to finish a lifetime’s worth of tasks even though she doesn’t have a lifetime left to live.

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 hersellC1