I’m particularly partial to Helen Garner’s nonfiction, but that doesn’t mean I object to picking up one of her novels now and then. The next to reach the top of my to-read stack is The Spare Room.
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The story is set over the course of three weeks, and narrated by a middle-aged woman named Helen (yes, the narrator has the same name as the author, she leaned into the skid on the writing-what-you-know bit, more on that in a second). It begins with her preparing her spare room for the arrival of her friend Nicola. Nicola is flying down from Sydney to stay with Helen for the duration of her “alternative treatment” for metastatic bowel cancer.
The Spare Room is a short novel, but it contains multitudes – as with all of Garner’s work. Narrator-Helen watches as Nicola forks over money, time, and energy to a bunch of quacks who promise to cure her terminal cancer with vitamin C and cupping. Nicola’s condition worsens despite these “treatments”, and Narrator-Helen quickly goes from generous hostess to live-in palliative care nurse.
Garner beautifully renders the frustration of tongue-biting as you watch a loved one act against their own interests (and get ripped off, to boot). Narrator-Helen wants to shake some sense into Nicola, and comes close a few times, but equally she’s desperate to support and love a long-time friend through the end stages of a terrible illness. It’s an impossible tightrope to walk. What makes The Spare Room a particularly interesting take – possibly unique – is its square focus on Narrator-Helen’s experience. Nicola’s point-of-view – as the person who is actually dying – doesn’t get a single moment.
Even with the tough subject matter, Garner still manages to make me chuckle – from Narrator-Helen’s incredulity at the suggestion of coffee enemas, to her desperation to reassure a real GP that she’s not like Nicola, she’s sensible.
The Spare Room is ostensibly fiction but, as I alluded to above, there’s undeniable authenticity in the account. The novel draws heavily on Garner’s real experiences caring for her friend Jenya Osborne in the last days of her life (and that’s not the only parallel between her life and Narrator-Helen’s, either).
It’s a short book, and it’s compulsively readable, so you’ll likely be able to knock it over in a single sitting (as I did). I highly recommend it for a rainy evening where you’re feeling pensive and you want to read a masterful work of close-to-the-bone fiction.
Read The Spare Room on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
My favourite Amazon reviews of The Spare Room:
- “So she is sick but that doesn’t give one an excuse to carry on the way she does.” – Lisa
- “I am not saying the sick friend does not have her annoying qualities but I tend to give people dying and fighting for everyday the benefit of the doubt and cut them a little slack!” – Jaime Flynn
- “Helen Garner is a very good writer. “The Spare Room” reeks of plausibility.” – Andrew Desmond
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