Helen Garner somehow has managed to write a book about death that is at once lyrical and real. ( )

What a brilliant book! It's called a novel, but is based on huge slabs of fact and experience. I read the transcript of Garner's Radio National interview where she talks about why she called the narrator Helen ... because she wanted to own the feelings of anger she wrote about.

The writing is tight, but still allows all the rage helplessness and frustration to burst out; as well as the compassion and love to shine through. The conflict between all these polarising emotions and the resultant 'guilt trip' would have exhausted anyone.

It's a very brave book in my opinion. A book that needed to be written (for a number of differing reasons) and a book that needs to be read. ( )

Confronting but compelling ( )

As I raced through this unputdownable book, I completely forgot I was reading fiction, in no small part due to the narrator being a writer named Helen. In a sense, its so much like Helen Garner's non-fiction reportage (the dodgy cancer clinic, visit to medical specialists, consultation with friends with professional experience) - the difference is the first person description of Helen's emotions, which quickly evolve from noble friend to overwhelmed, angry and put-upon carer as she absorbs the weight of her role. Lovely descriptions of early friendship, family birthdays, granddaughter's awareness and the sheer relief of completing one's sentence and being able to hand the patient back. ( )

This book was welcomed as I had heard good things about it. Not always keen toaccept reviews at face value, as publishers and author are in my opion a tad disingenuous when incestuously reviewing one of their own.

This book, is so well constructed, it is seamlessly writtien. An easy read takes nothing away from the vast expanse of emotions felt.

Would you open your door to your cancer suffering bombastic friend. An illness can put pressure upon the relationship of course. But would you interfere, if you thought the path she had chosen was a sham? Unusual premise to address, very brave I thought.

A great book for reading groups, much to discuss. A hot potato.

Helen Garner: The Spare Room
Some writers have the gift of being able to present, to depict, individuals and the web of interpersonal emotions so often misunderstood in origin and expression and which can run the gamut of love to hate wrapped in confusion and angst. Helen Garner is such a writer in this fine, short novel. Nicola, a free spirit all her life, is dying of cancer but is so hungry for reassurance about her disease, and so focused on denying it that she falls for all sorts of charlatans who promise miraculous cures with procedures that the medical world distains, so the purveyors claim, only because they don’t understand or because it would undermine their own authorities or practices. Helen is an old friend whom Nicola comes to stay with for three weeks while she pursues her latest grasp at life through a flaky procedure to do with massive doses of Vitamin C and special steam baths.

Helen sees the how the “professionals” prey upon the vulnerabilities, and pocketbooks, of the terminally ill, but she cannot confront Nicola because Nicola is convinced, or at least that is what she presents, that this will cure her and in a matter of weeks she will be as good as new. As Nicola says at one point, “No one wants to know about it, if I’m sad or frightened….I’ve learnt to shut up. And present an optimistic face.” And Nicola feels that she has wasted her life which she knows, in her hearts of hearts, is coming to an end. This is all too much for Helen, exhausted physically and emotionally after a couple of weeks and she finally confronts Nicola: “Why do people love you?...You don’t suppose it could be because of your character? Like for example what a faithful friend you are? Who has never been known to bear a grudge? …Or your bottomless generosity? The way everything you touch becomes beautiful?...What about how funny you are?...the way you listen to people when they talk? You even remember details. When people are with you they feel free. Don’t you know that? You think this is waste?”

This is a novel about love and friendship, about reaching across the boundaries to face, to deal with the commonality of death, the one because it is personally imminent, the other because she wants to help but in the end it is the place where everyone must go alone and all you can do is show that love and friendship and compassion and caring sometimes in physical care, sometimes in emotional truths. And in the end there might be some sort of conclusion, but there will always be confusion; as Helen thinks the night before Nicola is fly back home, “I was sick with shame, raging at myself for raging, raging at death for existing, for being so slow with her and so cruel.”

The characters are wonderful, well drawn, sympathetic and real. The writing is as spare as the extra room in Helen’s house, but it flows and its simplicity draws in sharper relief the complex of emotions in play. A wonderful , close, intimate novel.

This is only a short book, and it's easy, inviting reading, so I finished it in less than 24 hours. For me, that's unusual and it partly reflects my enthusiasm for it.

I relate well to most books about aging and dying (the main issues in my life now), but I found this book especially engaging. Garner focuses on the role of anger between two old friends, one of whom is dying and would seem to be immune from criticism by virtue of her terminal condition. After all, how can you risk upsetting a friend who is likely to die any day now? As a person who experiences a lot of anger, most of which is suppressed (but that's another story!), I found a great resonance with the angry "Helen" character in this book. I was disappointed that the story didn't last longer. ( )

This isn't the kind of book I normally read but a story about two friends dealing with cancer caught my attention. I loved the book. Yes, it was brutal and not always easy to read but I loved the characters. I loved reading about the friendship this woman created and then spent during her last days. Cancer has certainly stepped into most of our lives. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had friends or family like this to help us through such an illness? The writing was vivid and clear; I felt like I was right there in the cottage with them! My only criticism is that I thought the end was rushed, it didn't have the same timing as the rest of the book. Nice job, Ms. Garner. ( )

Nicola needs help as she's ill and dying. Helen, her friend offers a 3 week stay. Nicola goes for silly, expensive treatments which Helen finds tiring and infuriating. This friend is wearing out and Nicola is denying that she's dying and holding on to any line of hope. It got tiring to read of everyone being so solicitous to Nicola much as you would a child. Her behaviors continued onto other helpers also, as if she were entitled to such generosity. not ( )

It was with a sigh of relief that I read the last page of The Spare Room by Helen Garner. I was hesitant about reading it, because it sounded a tough subject - for three weeks Helen’s friend Nicola who is suffering from cancer, stays with her whilst she undergoes alternative therapy. Nicola refuses to accept that she is dying and Helen struggles to cope with the situation.

It’s not a book that I would say I enjoyed. It is a difficult book to read, not because of the style of writing, which is fluent, but because of the agonising descriptions of Nicola’s condition and the anguish and anger that hits Helen. But I’m glad I read it; it was nowhere nearly as bad as I imagined it would be and I will look out for more books by Helen Garner. ( )

This novel starts with a woman, Helen putting out fresh sheets for a friend who’s coming to stay, and thinking: what colour should they be? Helen’s friend, Nicola needs all the help she can get as she has cancer in her liver and her bones. Over the next three weeks, Helen will change Nicola’s sweated through sheets again and again, bring her food and drink, and drive her to the shabby little Theodore Institute to get the strange treatments that Nicola believes will make her cancer ‘disappear.’

Nicola comes from Old Money, but she’s always tried ‘alternatives’ – seeds and beads and vipassana. Now this is leading her into the world of small rooms where terminally ill people sit for a PowerPoint presentation on ‘High Dosage’ Vitamin C cures and the benefits of an Ozone Sauna.

The Spare Room is not just an attack on this kind of belief: one of the kindest people in the book is a boy who gives Nicola some electro-magnetic ‘healing’ patches. This novel helps you imagine how much you could want a dying person to believe they’re not dying – and hate how stupid they have to be to keep believing. Nicola thinks Professor Theodore can ‘scoop’ or ‘sweat’ cancer out of her body. Her bright smiling lies make Helen very angry and sad and tired, but Helen also knows – she does remember – that Nicola is the only one this cancer is going to kill. The dying should face the truth. Shouldn’t they? Should they?

The Spare Room does what the best fiction does: it makes you stop arguing, in that flat easy way, about what people should do. It reminds us we might not know what anyone should do, until we have to watch them doing it. ( )

This book was pretty short, but well written. I have to say that rather disturbingly, I found myself getting a little irritated with the selfishness of Nicola in her refusal to accept that she had terminal cancer and the weird and wacky treatments she insisted on having. I suppose I was rooting for her but at the same time hoping that she would start listening to Helen and instead of making herself more ill by undergoing 'therapy' (which consisted of extremely high doses of vitamin C) and accept her inevitable fate. However, most of us don't actually want to die, so I suppose it was entirely natural for her to try everything she possibly could to live. ( )

I read this book in a day, it flowed along, so easy to read. The story took me back to my own days of cancer nursing as a young woman. I recognised the character Nicola desperately searching for a cure trusting anything or anyone who showed care or interest, ratcheting up the family stress. Oh and I well remember coffee enemas.
I was there feeling the anger and frustration throughout, I couldn't put the book down. This author really hit the spot. and I look forward to her next offering. ( )

Helen's old friend Nicola is coming to stay with her for three weeks while she undergoes an alternative cancer treatment - everything is ready for her. When Nicola arrives, it's clear that she's in a really bad state and that even though she won't admit it, she hasn't that long to live. Helen has to cope on two fronts - having to be her friend's carer, and also her anger at the useless yet expensive treatment Nicola's receiving - it doesn't help at all, and Helen is left to pick up the pieces.

This short novel is the brutally honest story of a friendship that is tested to the limit, and the straws people will cling to in the belief that it'll do them good. Told from Helen's point of view, you'll laugh, cry and get angry with her all the way through, and it gives a real glimpse of what it's like to be a carer - even if only for a short while. ( )

In 'The Spare Room' Helen Garner rights a story that moved me, made me smile and made me cry. It deals with a lady approaching retirement asked to put a friend [Nicola] up in her 'spare room'. Nicola is there as she seeks out alternative treatment to cure her cancer and she is a lady struggling with denial as she fights this awful disease . Even though this is almost a novella in length it draws characters that come to life and it has an intimacy that draws you in.
I found Helen to be so human in her emotions - her desire to support her friend; her anger at the clinic which she sees scamming her friend; her gradually growing frustration with Helen's avoidance of the truth; and the emotional draining of sleepless nights/caregiving that eventually drags her really low.
This is a beautifully written and moving tale which certainly will draw me to more work by Helen Garner. ( )

Nicola, an old friend, comes to stay with Helen for three weeks to undergo cancer treatment in Melbourne. The hard-headed, sceptical Helen is soon enraged by the Nicola's faith in the shonky, painful treatment and her refusal to accept that she is dying. It sounds bleak, but it is a lively, compassionate book and Helen's honesty is often funny. ( )

In The Spare Room, sixty-something Helen opens her extra bedroom to an out-of-town friend, Nicola, who has traveled to Melbourne to participate in a 3-week alternative-medicine treatment for cancer.

The book opens as Helen prepares the room, positioning the bed in alignment with healing energy; making it with fresh, pretty linens; considering every detail from the perspective of what might be positive for Nicola. Helen’s research has previously spared Nicola from an expensive treatment scam, and she suspects this therapy is another fraud. But what she doesn’t suspect is how sick Nicola is, and in how much denial about her prognosis.

There will be very little sleep; those fresh linens will be changed dozens of times; and Helen will try to maintain a grip as she encounters a multitude of crazymaking people. It is at once a gentle, beautifully written story and, as Alice Sebold blurbs on the front cover, “a brutal novel.” Because caregiving -- even short-term -- can be brutal work. ( )

It must be a couple of years ago now that I first learned about this book. The Book Programme had a feature where it asked authors to talk about three books they had read recently. Peter Carey was a passionate advocate for The Spare Room, and expressed the hope that it would reach a wider audience outside Australia.

Now it has and I can understand why he felt so strongly. The subject matter is difficult, and I had to read just one chapter at a time, but I am so glad that I did read The Spare Room - it is quite extraordinary.

The story opens with Helen preparing her spare room for a friend’s visit. She is thoughtful, practical and a little anxious - understandably so given that her friend is gravely ill. It felt completely natural to warm to Helen and to be drawn in by her narrative.

Nicola is coming to stay because she isn’t fit enough to stay in her own inaccessible house and because she has put her faith in questionable alternative treatments for her cancer that are available at a nearby clinic.

She either cannot or will not acknowledge the seriousness of her illness and she completly fails to recognise the heavy burden that her declining health, the side effects of her treatments and her cavalier attitude are having on her friend.

The author portrays the full range of Helen’s emotions - grief, anger, resentment, frustration and, eventually, despair as she begins to feel that she really cannot cope - quite wonderfully. Every emotion and every incident rings true and Helen Garner writes clearly and beautifully.

The Spare Room is a powerful and deeply emotional book. It was difficult and sometimes painful to read, but I am so glad that I did. ( )

This book is a little gem! The searing honesty of the writing is amazing, dealing with what most would consider to be a difficult subject. How can it be right to feel so angry and frustrated with such a close friend at her most vulnerable? I lived with the characters through the ordeal that Helen Garner presents us with. Surely the author must have been in this situation to understand it so completely? I would recommend this book wholeheartedly as an insight into friendship, loyalty and caring tested to their very limits. Sadly,it is a scenario many of us will encounter at some time in our lives. ( )

I must read other books by Helen Garner as this is an absolutely amazing book. Garner, seemingly effortlessly, encapsulates in this tiny text, the fear, sadness, anger and frustration of watching someone you love in denial of their own death. I shared Helen's anger at the doctors Nicola trusted and who charged her for expensive treatment and her frustration and anger with Nicola 'The one thing I was sure of, as I lay pole-axed on my bed that afternoon ... was that if I did not get Nicola out of my house tomorrow I would slide into a lime-pit of rage that would scorch the flesh off me, leaving nothing but a strew of pale bones on a landscape of sand.' This is a brutally honest text that should be read. ( )

I read this beautifully written story in one sitting and became so immersed that I almost forgot that it was a piece of fiction. This book has such a sense of being written by someone who has been through the experience of caring for a close friend who is dying.

Although Helen, the narrator, has some reservations about her friend's visit and the treatment for cancer she is going to have during her stay, as she prepares her spare room, she sees the forthcoming visit as a time to spend together doing the things that they've always done like playing their ukeles in the evenings. Nothing has prepared her for the emotional and physical wringer this visit is going to put her through and the level to which her friendship is going to be stretched.

Nicola needs to avail herself of Helen's spare room because she is no longer capable of getting to her own, difficult to access, home and she is pursuing dubious treatments which she is convinced will cure her cancer. In her denial of the nature of her illness, she doesn't see the rigorous demands that the side effects of the treatment and her declining health is putting on Helen who is having to change her sheets up to three times in the night. The writer doesn't shy from showing the full range of Helen's feelings including the anger and frustration and her inability to cope to the extent of counting the days to when her friend will no longer be in her spare room.

This is an honest and bold book and the issues it raises would make it a perfect choice for a reading group. It is skillfully written with a light touch and some humour and delivers a powerful, emotional read. ( )

This is a slight little novel, that really does pack an emotional punch. Helen Garner's beautifully, yet simply, written novel tackles a difficult subject. The novel's narrator, Helen, must watch her friend Nicola as she battles with the final stages of cancer. Helen's frustration, and exhaustion are as palpable as the deep affection she has for her friend. This is an honest, poignant look at friendship, and dying. I began to suspect that there might be a biographical slant to the story, as it felt that the author must have expierenced something similar.

This spare, short novel is a gem of a book. Its prosaic language and simple construction belie the emotional punch that it packs. The very simplicity of the novel and its direct approach are a large part of its power. It reads as if Garner has truely been there and experienced the emotional rollercoaster of a family or close friend's death. The honesty and rawness of the emotions, the humour in the midst of the darkness of dying, the descriptions of struggling to deal with conflicting emotions of grief, anger, resentment and frustration all ring absolutely true. This book deserves to be read as widely as possible. Garner tackles with economy, elegance and poetic honesty something many of us will have to deal with but few of us are prepared to face.

Very well written, brutally truthful- I would not recommend this book to anyone who had cancer - but maybe for carers ... yes. ( )