I started out really enjoying this book but unfortunately about 2 thirds through it, it all got a little bit graphic and more than a little strange. I was disappointed as it is very rare for me not to finish a book but I just couldn't make myself continue with this one.

I really liked this book. It jumps around in time a little bit, but I didn't think it was confusing. It had more suspense than I expected, since you know from the beginning that the main character is dying. Not the holding your breath kind of suspense, but the kind that makes you keep reading because you want to know what is going on. Little pieces of information in the flashbacks make you want to keep reading to find out what happened for her to get from where she was to where she is in the present.

Oh my. I've been known to cry over a book once or twice or a million times. But this book went above and beyond. Beyond the potential horrifyingly depressing topic, the novel actually played out in an overall sense much less sentimental than I had expected, but I would be reading along just fine when I would be confronted with a passage so gut-wrenchingly sad or painful that I would audibly gasp. This is a touching, thoughtful, searingly honest and open portrayal of a woman confronting her death which is just around the corner now that her cancer has spread beyond any chance of full recovery. So she decides to literally write the book on dying, and we as readers get an inside look at her own preparations, both practical and emotional. While it may be horribly uncomfortable to think about our own mortality-- and the fact that others will survive us and continue on-- this book is well worth the reading experience.

Very enjoyable read

Delia is dying, leaving behind her husband, their two daughters and a wealth of history that she never really thought about until pretty much now.

I enjoyed parts of this book immensely and disliked parts immensely (the autopsy chapter seemed unnecessarily brutal...and that's said as someone who has worked in similar environments). I enjoyed the unexpected twists that appeared through out and the main characters pragmatism. Learning her back story bit by bit was enough to keep me invested but it didn't always hold me for long periods of time. I found it was a book that I read in, what for me, is quite a broken fashion.

This is genuinely my favourite book of all time. I bought it on a whim in supermarket one Easter when I had nothing else to do about 10 years ago and I’ve read it probably about 5 times now. I’ve never read a book which makes me feel so self aware and so lucky to be alive. It made me think about death in a way I never had before, and the beautiful descriptions have always stayed with me. I adore this book and I know I will read it again and again.

I really struggled to get through this book, and I found myself having to skim many parts in order to do so.

Although well-written, the great majority of the book is written from the narrator's viewpoint, with little dialogue between characters, and with very little depth. I finished the book feeling like I didn't know any of the many main characters, including the narrator herself. The sections where the narrator describes various domestic and household duties were probably the most detailed parts of the book - and also the most boring. The handful of "Dear Delia" letters that are scattered throughout the novel were the best part, but when combined, account for only several pages of the whole book.

As a reader who enjoys books with a plot and with characters I can relate to or empathize with, this is not a book I would recommend.

Mmmm... this book was okay. A bit strange but great in patches.

Delia Bennet is the author of a series of household guides to such domestic topics as laundry, gardening and cooking, as well as authoring an advice column. Now she is dying of cancer and so she decides to use her experience to write one final guide: The Household Guide to Dying. While writing and researching this book (Delia learns about autopsies or coffins for example), she is also preparing her own family for her demise and coming to terms with a tragedy that occurred in her own life, several years previously.

The first half of the book is quite slow as we get to know Delia and her family. The introduction of the sub-plot, which involves Delia as a teenager, is initially quite confusing to read. The second half is stronger, as the characters become more developed. As a mother I found it almost unbearable to read about the ways that Delia prepares her young daughters for her death: making lists to help them plan their far-off weddings, teaching them the art of the perfect boiled egg and letting them illustrate her coffin.

Having said this, while I enjoyed and was moved by this book, I always felt detached from it. I admired Delia's strength, I laughed at her witty replies in her advice column and I felt for her grieving husband, but somehow the characters never became real people for me. I felt emotional at the end, but I also felt that the emotion had been manipulated out of me rather than arising spontaneously: like the difference between breastfeeding and expressing milk.

The author, Debra Adelaide, lectures creative writing in Sydney, where the novel is also set. The local references and jargon are very much part of this book. It might be helpful for the reader to know that Arthur Stace was a man who repeatedly wrote the word "eternity" in chalk on the sidewalks of Sydney for 35 years.

Funny and poignant, Adelaide writes so eloquently about death, and dying, and like all great novels you are forced to confront your own mortality.