The Spare Room

Infobox Book |
name = The Spare Room
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First hardback edition cover
author = Helen Garner
illustrator =
cover_artist = W. H. Chong
country = Australia
language = English
series =
subject =
genre = Novel
publisher = The Text Publishing Company
release_date = 7th April 2008 [cite web|url=http://www.doubleday.com.au/cm2/Products.aspx?Catalog=AU%20DD%20CM%20Base%20Catalog&ProductID=29660_5(DD%20Base%20Catalog)|title=2008 Double Day Book and Music Clubs|publisher=Doubleday Australia]
english_release_date =
media_type = Print
pages = 195 pp
isbn = ISBN 978-1921351396
preceded_by =
followed_by =

The Spare Room is a novel by Australian writer Helen Garner, set over the course of three weeks while the narrator, Helen, cares for a friend dying of bowel cancer. "The Spare Room" was published in 2008.

Plot summary

The novel is told from the first person perspective of a woman, Helen, who lives in Melbourne near her family. A friend Nicola, who is ill with bowel cancer, comes to stay with Helen in order to pursue alternative therapy for her disease, which is considered terminal by her doctors. Helen is suspicious of the treatment and becomes more so as she sees it in action and its deletrious health effects. As the three weeks of the novel progress Helen becomes increasingly angry with Nicola for denying the seriousness of her illness, forcing those around her to do emotional work on her behalf in confronting her death, and in making light of them for doing so. At the end of the novel, Nicola returns to mainstream oncology treatment, and the doctors find that some of her symptoms are due to cancer having destroyed part of her vertabrae. The novel flashes forward to the months ahead, where Nicola returns to Sydney and eventually dies. A number of friends and family, including Helen, take turns as her caretaker. Nicola only truly embraces her death when a Buddhist friend tells her that in dying, she has something to teach them.

The novel draws heavily on both events and details from Garner's life. The narrator Helen lives next door to her daughter Eva and Eva's children, as Garner does with her daughter Alice Garner and her children, and plays the ukulele as Garner does. The events in the novel are based on Garner's spending a period caring for her friend Jenya Osbourne when Osbourne was dying. Garner chose to use her own first name for the narrator character as she wanted to admit to the least attractive or acceptable emotions that she felt as her friend died.cite news|last=Legge|first=Kate|title=Truly Helen|date=2008-03-29|url=http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23458847-5012694,00.html|work=The Australian|publisher=News Limited|accessdate=2008-04-16]

Critical response

The publication of "The Spare Room" received considerable media coverage and the novel was favourably reviewed in several major Australian metropolitan newspapers. Points of interest included: Garner's simple and powerful prose stylecite web |url=http://hdl.handle.net/2328/1791 |title=Review of 'The Spare Room' by Helen Garner |accessdate=2008-04-16 |last=Dooley |first=Gillian |date=2008-04-05 |format=PDF |work=Writers Radio |publisher=Radio Adelaide |language=English] ; Garner's return to fiction after the sixteen years since her last novelcite news|last=Lehmann|first=Geoffrey|title=Tale of a fight against mortality|url=http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23429021-5003900,00.html|date=2008-03-29|accessdate=2008-04-16|publisher=News Limited|work=The Australian] ; and praise for her treatment of illness, mortality and the unattractive emotions it involvescite news|last=Buchanan|first=Rachel|title=Opening up the spare room|url=http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/opening-up-the-spare-room/2008/03/27/1206207298343.html|publisher=Fairfax Media|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|date=2008-03-29|accessdate=2008-04-16] . Some reviewers found the strong similarities with Garner's life distracting. One noted some of the advantages of fiction, in that Garner was able to resolve the story in the novel in a way she could not in her major non-fiction works "The First Stone" and "Joe Cinque's Consolation". Robert Dessaix wrote an extended review that although favourable argued that "The Spare Room" is not a novel, but closer to a piece of journalism or a report from a metaphorical battle front, particularly as the novel is highly focused on Helen's point of view and never on Nicola's interior experience.cite news | last = Dessaix | first = Robert | title = Kitchen-Table Candour | work = The Monthly | pages = 58–60 | language = English | publisher = Morry Schwartz | date = 2008-04 | url = http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/869 | accessdate = 2008-04-16]

Awards

*Victorian Premier's Literary Award, Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, 2008: winner
*Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Best Fiction Book, 2008: winner

References