The Spare Room – Helen Garner (2008) 195 pages
The Spare Room was on my radar for a long time before I read it, as the themes are ones that mean a lot to me. I’ve spent nearly all my working life in cancer care and palliative care in one form or another, and so a novella about a friend caring for a dying person was always going to be of interest.
It also means I’m hard to please – anything vaguely sentimental or factually inaccurate is going to annoy me. I thought Helen Garner got everything spot-on.
The novel opens with Helen preparing her spare room for a friend to stay:
“I made it up nicely with a fresh fitted sheet, the pale pink one, since she had a famous feel for colour, and pink is flattering even to skin that has turned yellowish.”
She is still shocked by Nicola’s frail appearance when she picks her up. She knows her friend has terminal cancer and is with her in Melbourne to attend an alternative clinic. However, it quickly becomes clear that Helen will provide a more involved caring role than she anticipated.
An unspoken tension between the friends is that Helen is highly sceptical of the treatments Nicola is putting her faith in:
“ ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’s the treatments causing the pain – that’s how I know they’re working. It’s just the toxins coming out.’
[…]
I held my peace. The ozone smelt delicious, very subtle and refreshing, like watermelon, or an ocean breeze. I sat on a chair in the corner and pulled the lid off my coffee.”
Garner brilliantly captures all the negotiations that take place, the bargaining between Helen and Nicola about what is acceptable and what will not change.Helen doesn’t try to talk her friend out of the treatments that she thinks are a total swizz, but she does try and get her to accept pain relief. Nicola flatly refuses to see the palliative care team – who would support Helen in such a physically and emotionally stressful situation – because she associates them with giving up.
“What was all this anger? I needed to be kinder to her. Dying was frightening. But it was easier to imagine being tender when I had a packet of slow-release morphine capsules in my bag.”
Nicola doesn’t recognise the immense pressure she puts on Helen, and on other friends, by expecting them to care for her as she refuses statutory care services. The story is compassionate to all involved, showing the immense love the women have for one another, and how this can sit alongside selfish actions. Neither Helen or Nicola are self-sacrificing angels, quietly enduring the unendurable. Instead they are kind, funny, angry, confused and scared – recognisably human.
“I longed to slip her shoes off, to draw a cotton blanket over her. But was scared to touch her. I was afraid of her weakness, afraid of her will. So I stepped out of the room and closed the door behind me.”
It’s such an impressive achievement by Garner to capture a complex emotional story without minimising it or retreating into cliché and sentiment. The Spare Room is a truly affecting exploration of death and dying. It shows how grief begins before the person dies, and the pain and joy that can exist alongside each other in such moments.
“Oh, I loved her for the way she made me laugh. She was the least self-important person I knew, the kindest, the least bitchy. I couldn’t imagine the world without her.”
madame bibi lophile recommends 
A difficult subject to write about, but I’m glad to see both characters are portrayed realistically.
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It is difficult but thought it was so well done – realistic but very compassionate.
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I liked this one a lot too. She’s a great writer.
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Great to hear you enjoyed this too Cathy. It’s the first I’ve read by her but I’m keen to explore more now.
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I have only read her nonfiction before, This House of Grief is fantastic.
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Oh, thank you for the tip! I’ll look out for it.
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This sounds very humane and well-judged without ever tipping into sentimentality. It’s quite a fine line to tread when writing about a highly emotive subject. Such a thoughtful review and thought-provoking review, Madame Bibi.
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There are such complex themes and feelings to balance but she does it so well. Thank you for your kind comment Jacqui!
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This does sound good Madame B – it would be easy to make a book like this trite or over-sentimental, but to make the two protagonists real and believeable is an achievement.
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It really is Kaggsy, I was so impressed.
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I read this 10 or so years ago, and found it brilliant and gruelling to read. I have no experience in this area, so didn’t know if it was accurate – so really interesting to get your perspective there. And gosh, thank goodness there are people like you who work in this field. Thank you!
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Good to hear you rated this highly too Simon. Thank you for your kind words – I’m always in awe of and very glad there are people working in A&E, I can’t imagine anything more stressful or how on earth they do it!
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Like Simon, I’m glad there are people like you around who can help the rest of us through these most difficult times! I can’t read books like this but it’s good to hear you felt she gave a realistic picture of the characters.
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I can see the themes are very painful ones and so definitely not something everyone would want to read, for sure. It was very realistic, but never harsh. I thought it was a really sensitive novella.
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This one has been on my TBR for aaaaaages. I love Helen Garner.
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This is the first of hers I’ve read and it did make me keen to read more. I hope you enjoy this when you get to it!
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I’ve read this one twice and was as impressed the second time as I was the first. Like you, I liked Garner’s clear-eyed portrayal of both characters.
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She manages to be unsentimental but still kind to her characters, doesn’t she? Good to hear it works well as a re-read too, I’d like to revisit it again.
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