by Helen GarnerHouse of Anansi Press
~ Review in Halifax Herald, January 2010
Helen lives a peaceful life. Her daughter and granddaughter live next door, and life is good, until her old friend Nicola breezes into town for three weeks. She has come to Melbourne for a round of intensive alternative treatment for advanced cancer, a treatment viewed with enormous hope by Nicola and a healthy skepticism by Helen. And in spite of protestations to the contrary, Nicola is in great need of help.
Helen becomes her nurse, her guardian, her chauffeur. She changes sheets, washes dishes, cooks, cleans and loses sleep. She rages at the clinic which gives her friend expensive false hope because Nicola is obviously dying. She battles anger at Nicola’s thoughtless imposition as she begins to understand that the situation is quite beyond her. And together they share moments of great peace. “We sat on the back step in a line, and drank our tea ... It was like being submerged to our chins in calm water. Our limbs were weightless, and so were our hearts. I looked at the clock. It was only half past eight.”
When Helen cannot see how she can go on, she begins to understand why Nicola has come to her. The Spare Room moves forward with a wry antipodean humour that belies the drama swiftly unfolding within the pages. It is an astonishing, relentless account of the resiliency of a friendship pushed to its limits.
Helen Garner writes fiction and non-fiction, essays, short stories, articles and screenplays. She won the Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2006, and The Spare Room was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2009. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.
