Helen Garner - The Spare Room (2008)
NUMBER: 84
Genre: Fiction; Origin: Australia; Pages: 200
Satisfaction rating: 10.0
OVERVIEW:
Helen lovingly prepares her spare room for her friend Nicola. She is coming to visit for three weeks, to receive treatment she believes will cure her cancer. From the moment Nicola staggers off the plane, gaunt and hoarse but still somehow grand, Helen becomes her nurse, her guardian angel and her stony judge. The Spare Room tells a story of compassion, humour and rage. The two women – one sceptical, one stubbornly serene – negotiate an unmapped path through Nicola’s bizarre therapy, stumbling toward’s the novel’s terrible and transcendent finale.
MATTHEW’S COMMENTS:
I could tell you how this novel crept up on me and how it lingered long after I put it down, I could tell of the powerful characters and the emotional depth delivered in the final pages, I could tell you that often the simplest plot can have the most meaning; however, instead I will record the reflections of Peter Carey:
‘A perfect novel, imbued with all Garner’s usual clear-eyed grace but with some other magnificent dimension that hides between the lines of her simple conversational voice. How is it that she can enter this heart-breaking territory – the dying friend who comes to stay – and make it not only bearable, but glorious, and funny? There is no answer except: Helen Garner is a great writer; The Spare Room is a great book.’
FURTHER REFERENCES:
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