The Spare Room

Her debut novel, Monkey Grip , won her instant literary fame, as well as fuelling the perpetual debate about the boundaries between biography and fiction: Friends and acquaintances soon learned that anything they did or said was liable to end up in print, although the fine quality of Garner's books - and their status as contemporary classics - may have softened the hurt. Garner's relationship with fiction has always been a troubled one. Nagged by a feeling of being "a failure because I didn't do massive great novels about Australia or the outback or something", she has produced a large amount of journalism labelled as such, but sculpted like fiction and a smaller oeuvre of short stories and novellas that seek to compress and alchemise the stuff of her life.

Following the breakup of her marriage to the novelist Murray Bail in the s, she seemed to join the ranks of those who declared fiction a dead end. As if to prove it, her essay collection, The Feel of Steel, published in the same year as Andrew Marr's notorious "Death of the Novel" polemic, was more alive and sparky than the average Booker winner. Some Australian critics have loftily argued that Garner never wrote novels anyway, only thinly disguised memoirs.

Even so, the elusive "winking light" of fiction kept beckoning, and now, 15 years after her last novella, Cosmo Cosmolino, comes The Spare Room, a story of a friendship tested beyond endurance when Nicola, a gushy bohemian with end-stage cancer, flies to Melbourne for a three-week programme of quack treatments. Her old friend Helen, having offered her a spare room, finds herself required to provide much more: Thus, Helen must swallow her feelings as Nicola huddles naked in an "ozone sauna", clutching a perfumed "wand-like object wrapped in kitchen paper", while charlatans chatter about how the vitamin C injections "sort of scoop the cancer cells out of your body".

Inevitably, this story's themes are not just love and death, but exhausted tolerance and murderous anger. The fact that the novel's protagonist is a writer named Helen, and that it's closely based on Garner's own experience nursing a terminally ill friend, has revived the debate among Australian literati about fiction versus journalism. Peter Carey gallantly declared the book "a perfect novel". Perfect it is not - try to get hold of The Children's Bach if you want to discover a novel whose absence from British bookshops is a scandal - but it is a powerful piece of work.

It would have been more powerful still if Garner had kept Nicola and Helen alone in the house together for the whole three weeks, instead of allowing a couple of Nicola's pals from Sydney to share the burden halfway through, but perhaps such a simplification would, in Garner's eyes, have constituted too much shaping and too little honesty. Does this make the book a mere memoir? Academic disputes about what precisely qualifies or disqualifies a story as "a novel" are futile.

The descriptions are direct and the language simple. Short sentences often enable the action, which often reads like a journal, to flow easily. The reader can easily empathise with Helen's frustration and burgeoning anger. Helen cannot believe that her friend, usually so quick and clever at assessing people, can be hoodwinked so completely despite the evidence stacking up.

She also feels a conflict between her natural compassion - accepting the weariness and fatigue due to the lengths to which a carer has to go - and a feeling of being taken advantage of whilst Nicola infuriatingly persists in making light of her illness. Helen is permanently angry; increasingly both physically and emotionally exhausted. Something has to snap. She finally insists that her friend confront the true situation, the sure knowledge that she will imminently die. The descriptions and observations are made with sensitivity.

In no way is this a hatchet job on alternative medicines. The details of this aspect of the novel are of specific individual cases of fraudulent practitioners, with unrealistic and dangerously misleading expectations. Both main characters are in their early sixties; intelligent people, mature and experienced enough through their travels to have a clear eye for a different approach, never assuming that Western medicine is the only way.

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Nicola comes across as a flamboyant character, and is characterised as a ex-hippy. The novel has a sense of authenticity. The language used is direct and powerful; the situations and conflicting thoughts familiar to anyone who has had contact with serious illness and mortality. It is interesting that Helen Garner chose to give her narrator, the viewpoint character, the same name as herself, and it seems very likely that this was quite deliberate. The author had been writing nonfiction for 16 years before returning to fiction, and this book has a similar feeling to a documentary; it feels "real".

Sure enough, a little research reveals that Helen Garner has drawn quite heavily on her own experience, and that many of the components of the novel come from details in the author's own life. Just as the "Helen" of the book has her daughter Eva and Eva's children as neighbours, in real life Helen Garner lives next door to her daughter Alice and her children. There are similarities between them too; Alice Garner is an actress and musician. But perhaps the most significant parallel is that the author herself spent time caring for her friend, Jenya Osborne, when she was dying.

It is tempting to think that Helen Garner consciously made the choice to use her own first name for the main character, as she wanted to focus on the actual emotions that she felt as her friend was dying, whether or not they were very pleasant to hear, acceptable, justified - or even very understandable. This, the author seems to be saying throughout, is how it really is. The ending is inevitable, but it happens "off-stage". We have known right from the start that Nicola intends to stay for a mere three weeks - the length of the course of "treatment" for which she has been persuaded she needs to travel to Melbourne.

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By the end of the novel we have met a couple of other relatives willing to help, and we flash forward to several months later, when Nicola has returned to Sydney. She has made a proper decision, with full awareness of her situation, rather than a pipe-dream. Her decision incorporates both the mainstream oncology of Western tradition, but also has a nod toward Buddhist philosophy.

Many readers may find some aspect of the ending which resonates with them, whatever their personal beliefs. It does not reflect a narrow view. Possibly Helen Garner felt that in fiction she would be able to set down a wider approach to the situation than she herself felt when confronted with it. She could also perhaps resolve some issues better in fiction.

Perhaps a psychologist might say that such an approach was the author working out their problems. The novel makes a brave effort at an impartial view, accurately told, of what feels to all those concerned like an intolerable situation. It is not an attempt at a persuasive tale, but more a chronicle of possible events, in an area pitted with dangers, but few definitive answers as to a "right" approach. It was possibly cathartic to write; it is certainly compelling to read. And afterwards a reader might feel that their knowledge of the human condition is just that little bit wider and deeper.

View all 6 comments. Helen is busy preparing the spare room for her friend Nicola who is coming to stay with her for next three weeks. Helen and Nicola have been friends for the past fifteen years. Nicola has terminal cancer and would like Helen to care for her whist she is undergoing treatment. Helen arrives in plenty of time to pick Nicola up from the airport, but she wasn't expecting to see her friend look so sick, so sick that she could hardly walk.

Of course Nicola insists it was just the flight that has taken i Helen is busy preparing the spare room for her friend Nicola who is coming to stay with her for next three weeks. Of course Nicola insists it was just the flight that has taken its toll on her and that she'll be fine once she has a rest. Nicola will be attending The Theodore Institute where she she will undergo extensive alternative treatment for her cancer.

She is convinced that after three weeks of this alternative treatment she will be cured of her cancer. The alternative treatment is high doses of vitamin C. Nicola explains to Helen how the treatment works and as far as Helen is concerned it's nothing, but a load of rubbish. Helen knows that there is no miracle cure for the final stages of terminal cancer, but trying to convince Nicola is another matter.

After only a few treatments of vitamin C, Nicola starts to feel very sick and is in a lot of pain. She wakes during the night to sopping wet bedding from sweating and chronic pain. Each night Helen helps her change the bedding and tries to comfort her, but her patience are wearing thin knowing this treatment won't work. As Nicola continues with the treatment, Helen becomes more angrier, frustrated and exhausted and she can't seem to make Nicola see that this treatment is not only expensive, but it's all a waste of time.

She only wants what's best for her friend and that is to make sure the last bit of time she has left is as pain free as possible. This may have been a quick read, but it definitely wasn't an easy read at times. A heartbreaking and powerful read about friendship and dying. I have mixed feelings about this book. Helen is a terrific writer, so, no problems with that. The story is about two friends, one with end-stage cancer, Nicola, and the other, Helen, takes care of her, for a short while, in her spare room. The story is a thinly veiled reference to the death of Helen Garner's friend, Jenya Osbourne.

Helen watched Jenya hide her fear by always being 'cheery', and insisted that her painful treatments would soon cure her. Of course, Nicola is not exactly Jenya, and ' I have mixed feelings about this book. Of course, Nicola is not exactly Jenya, and 'Helen' is not quite Helen. Helen Garner said in an interview, "In the past four or five years several people I've been close to and loved have died: In four of those deaths I was involved in caring for the person right up to the death knock. I was surprised and appalled to discover that the feelings you have when you're looking after a dying person are not at all the kind of fantasised Florence Nightingale things you might hope for, but there can often be a very dark, semi-conscious struggle and you find in yourself emotions that are ugly and frighten you and fill you with shame.

I felt I couldn't be the only person who knew those feelings. Folks who have, feel she hits the nail right on the head in her descriptions of Helen's thoughts, and emotions, as she cares for Nicola. So, I am assuming that my negative reaction to the scenario is due to my lack of life experience in this area.

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I leave it to the ones who have walked a similar path to put forth their more balanced reviews. The main issue for me is this I guess that rubbed me the wrong way. Doesn't a person have the right to decide how they wish to die, even if others don't understand? I would like to think that we do.

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I would hope that folks who truly love us would love us enough to respect us in this Jenya Osbourne's sister, Ingrid Davis, wrote to Helen saying, "It seems to be an honour that you chose to write about Jenya. Too many people dodge around the issue of dying. What you have said needs to be said, it makes our lives right to know what really happens. We all had such a difficult time and Helen has described it for us.

It's hard for me to see anything but the truth in it. Just because this tickled me, I am including it for your viewing pleasure. Intense anxiety and guilt cluster round the state of having read. Press the memory of a book, and it goes blurry. View all 4 comments.

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Award winning writer Helen Garner returns to fiction after 15 years to write this short, intense and beautiful novel about friendship and dying. It seems intimately personal since the narrator is also named Helen, and the emotions are so raw and powerful. The premise--Helen agrees to let her friend stay with her for 3 weeks while she undergoes an alternative cancer therapy in Melbourne where Helen lives.

What she didn't know was just how very sick her friend is. Both women are in their 60s and Award winning writer Helen Garner returns to fiction after 15 years to write this short, intense and beautiful novel about friendship and dying. Both women are in their 60s and on their own, and it becomes a struggle between needing help and asking for it, wanting to help but knowing what personal limits there are, and the boundaries of friendship and love.

The issue of truth comes up again and again--facing the truth of an illness, the realities of a moment, and the sum of a life. This is a quick read, but not an easy one. And just a word of warning - it was good, but in no way was it an uplifting and inspirational read. So if you are already feeling a bit blue, this one is not for you. Likewise, if you have recently supported a loved one through a regime of cancer treatment or perhaps even not so recently , or are going through treatment yourself, or if this is a rather raw subject for any reason, this is probably not the best book for you at this time.

It was rather brutal read, although 3. It was rather brutal read, although very well done. Oct 20, Nettie rated it it was amazing. This is a pretty brash and unsentimental look at the nature of friendship under dire strain. Nicola has cancer and comes to stay with Helen while she undergoes alternative treatment, much to Helen's concern.

Their differing views on treatment and pain management for Nicola drive Helen to the brink of love for her friend. I loved the honesty of this book. It was a little hard to read at times - the raw honesty of friendship, even in despair. A short book - read in a weekend, and I'm a slow reader This is a pretty brash and unsentimental look at the nature of friendship under dire strain. A short book - read in a weekend, and I'm a slow reader. Apr 10, Helen Crozier rated it really liked it Shelves: I saw Helen interviewed last night at Gleebooks - it was great to be in this packed room and see her in person.

It's a quick but very emotional read. I'm going to read it again and will do a better review. I read it in one sitting This is the type of book I usually avoid, what I'd classify in my crusty bachelor mentality as a "woman's book," full of sisterly strength and taut spinsterly emotions. But when I came across it in the Guardian's list of "The decade's best unread books" I was curious enough to give it a try.

It was exactly what I'd suspected — and it was very well done. Garner tells her story in a flat voice, wry, understated and convincing. Solid characters and completely believable; it read like a This is the type of book I usually avoid, what I'd classify in my crusty bachelor mentality as a "woman's book," full of sisterly strength and taut spinsterly emotions.

Solid characters and completely believable; it read like a short memoir, not a novel. A couple scenes hit me hard in the heart and had me laughing at the same time. You've got to love a scene that concludes with a couplet from an art film and bottoms out with a shot of caffeine: I'd like to write the director a fan letter.

And this very night I'm going to give myself a coffee enema. View all 5 comments. Apr 03, Kirsty rated it it was amazing Shelves: I really enjoyed a collection of Helen Garner's short stories which I read relatively recently, and looked forward to giving her novel, The Spare Room , a go. Thoughtful and meditative, with a definite power, this novel took my breath away as it reached its end. Garner's beautiful writing is so detailed in its depictions, and the narrative voice immediately felt authentic. Spare Room is a very human portrayal of what it means to live with cancer, and what it is like to witness a loved one sufferi I really enjoyed a collection of Helen Garner's short stories which I read relatively recently, and looked forward to giving her novel, The Spare Room , a go.

Spare Room is a very human portrayal of what it means to live with cancer, and what it is like to witness a loved one suffering with the disease. Garner demonstrates the immense difficulty about being someone's primary carer in attentive and tightly sculpted prose. A new favourite, certainly. View all 3 comments. Jun 30, Alan rated it really liked it Shelves: A woman with cancer, Nicola, comes to stay with her friend, Helen, for a few weeks. She attends alternative therapy sessions - Vitamin C, apricot pits, 'cupping' - to no avail.

The description of pain and clearing up the bedsheets etc is acute and harrowing but clear eyed and without sentiment. It is billed as a novel, but the main character besides being called Helen is also a writer, and it reads like non fiction. Relief comes in the form of the child next door who cuts through the adults' tal A woman with cancer, Nicola, comes to stay with her friend, Helen, for a few weeks. Relief comes in the form of the child next door who cuts through the adults' talk with her innocent brutality.

A quick, depressing, sobering, necessary read. View all 8 comments. Um livro simples, tocante e comovente que nos leva a casa de Helen aquando da chegada da sua amiga Nicola. Nov 30, Anna rated it liked it Shelves: While I personally find Helen Garner as a person as bad as nails on a blackboard, her writing is often engaging - reading her is a good exercise in the moral right any author has to be separate from her work, even non-fiction. She stretches my abilities in this department because everything in her books revolves around the Copernican universe of Helen, or seems to.

This is a hard but rewarding read if you've ever nursed anyone through a terminal illness, or perhaps even just had the shits with a While I personally find Helen Garner as a person as bad as nails on a blackboard, her writing is often engaging - reading her is a good exercise in the moral right any author has to be separate from her work, even non-fiction.

This is a hard but rewarding read if you've ever nursed anyone through a terminal illness, or perhaps even just had the shits with a friend whose been seriously ill, and a bit wrong in the head because of it. In denial, or absurdly needy, manipulative, or shrill. Plenty of frailty here, though Garner as always luxuriates in the hairshirt of what a shitbag she is, and how ruthlessly she writes about herself. I believe this is what is called false humility - humility that glories in deprivation, in excess.

That wants to be noticed. The moral bankruptcy of organisations like The Theodore Group, who prey on desperate, terminally ill patients clawing at any straw of hope to extend life is indisputable, but Garner is especially skillful at communicating her sense of powerlessness to blow the whistle on their charlatanry in the face of her friend's desire to believe, to be cured. As a skeptical Christian child, I remember the guilt I felt in participating in what I did not believe in, in order to protect my mother from disappointment.

It's an internal cringe you don't forget. A short book, worth reading - particularly if you might be about to deal with a palliative situation. Feb 07, Louise rated it really liked it. I found this book to be very realistic in the way Garner handled the anger that comes along with death and grief. The tale of two friends, one dying of cancer, the other her temporary refuge while she undergoes 'experimental' read quack treatment for cancer.

In Nicola, the free-spirited, grande dame with cancer, I found almost nothing sympathetic. Dramatically refusing to admit there 's anything seriously wrong, she creates huge vats of boiling anger in all of her friends and family. The brutal h I found this book to be very realistic in the way Garner handled the anger that comes along with death and grief. The brutal honesty in which Helen deals with her own anger and tries to force Nicola to see the truth made her very sympathetic.

Some joyful, funny moments break the tension and make the book even more enjoyable. I bolted this down in just a couple of hours.