The Spare Room: A Novel (Helen Garner, Text, $29.95 hb, ISBN 9781921351396, April) *** 1/2

This is Helen Garner’s first novel in 15 years, though it could as easily sit with her formidable body of essays and nonfiction such as Joe Cinque’s Consolation and The First Stone with its familiar personal and direct subject matter and style. In fact, with a firstperson narrator called Helen detailing a story as harrowing in its own way as the subject matter of those two books, you could be forgiven for seeing it as such. No matter, the subject matter is compelling, and Garner’s writing so assured and compassionate that any reader will be enthralled and swept along. Helen’s Sydney friend, Nicola, suffering what looks like stage four cancer, has come to stay, (in the eponymous spare room) while she is to undertake a controversial, vitamin C-based treatment she believes will cure her. Dialogue, description and pacing need to be seamless and convincing to carry the story of host and patient, as they battle and bargain their way to resolution in a (literally) very painful life situation. Few Australian writers would be bold enough to take this on as a subject for a novel, but we know Helen Garner relishes a challenge. It’s her triumph to pull it off.

David Gaunt is co-owner of Gleebooks in Sydney

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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