The center figure of the book, Delia, is a columnist who provides popular household advice to life's most important problems. However, Delia's life, it turns out, is being cut short, because she is losing her long battle with cancer. Thus, she decides to organize her remaining months, and her husband's and children's lives without her, the same way she has always ordered their household (*I notice some of you may not agree with this approach, and neither do I. On the other hand, leaving some good words or advices to their foreseeable future issues may still be a good idea.).
It's more for a leisure (and not heavy) reading. For example: Tips for those intending to purchase their own coffins: allow for ample time, take supplies, be prepared for surprises. Better still, remember the advantages of online shopping and throw caution to the wind: one is unlikely to get carried away and order several coffins, as happens when buying film posters, novelty cufflinks, cleanskin wines or all the other bargains offered on eBay. (Hahahah!)
Towards the end of the book, there is a paragraph which I like, when talking about her love to the children:
How much I love them, and yet how much I desire to be free. How I can now adore every particle of them and yet for the first time want to leave, without a single stab of guilt. That's a surprise too. I imagined dying to be similar to leaving them at the school gate on the first day,knowing you have to go, you want to go, but every muscle screaming as much as them to stay, every cell clawing you back. But no, now I'm feeling it for the first and last time in my life, I discover it isn't like that at all. I am calm. I feel no pain. I watch them coming and going and my heart could not be fuller with them, but I experience total freedom. My family. It seems to be an ending yet not a goodbye. I seem to be leaving them for something much better, thought I can't have loved them more. Although I want them, I can let them go. Such splendid poetic ambiguity. I thought I was right before this and now I know if for certain. Death is a poetic moment.
