It starts with Helen's feelings of shock and indignation. The feelings and emotions experienced by Nicola are never described, and yet one might have assumed that this would be the novel's main focus. It is an unusual novel as it is told exclusively from the inner perspective of Helen herself. All the action takes place over the course of three weeks and describes the experience of a woman in Melbourne, Helen, as she finds herself looking after a friend from Sydney, Nicola, who is dying of bowel cancer. The Spare Room is a shortish novel from 2008 by the Australian writer Helen Garner. 'Helen Garner writes the best sentences in Australia.' 'Garner has always had a mimic's ear for dialogue and an eye for unconscious symbolism, the clothes and gestures with which we give ourselves away.'

'She is outstanding in the accuracy of her observations, the intensity of passion.her radar-sure humour.' There is not a paragraph, let alone a page, where she does not compel your attention.' 'Helen Garner is an extraordinarily good writer. In 2006 she won the Melbourne Prize for Literature.

Her most recent books are The First Stone, True Stories, My Hard Heart, The Feel of Stone and Joe Cinque's Consolation. She is also one of Australia's most respected non-fiction writers, and received a Walkley Award for journalism in 1993. She has published many works of fiction including Monkey Grip, Cosmo Cosmolino and The Children's Bach. “Exceptional … an unsettling and skilled work that raises important questions about the process of dying and what caring well for the dying requires … So powerful is The Spare Room’s communication of the the triumphs and failures involved in dying … the reader painfully ricochets between the various positions … Somehow as we read we actually become these characters … This extraordinary effect results in an uncomfortable read.Helen Garner was born in Geelong in 1942. The Spare Room achieves this … And yet in a book this spare, written with such grace, Garner introduces in the interstices a calm, precise poetry” “Only great fiction demands us to reset our moral compass and look at our value coordinates all over again. How is it that she can enter this heartbreaking 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”

“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.

The Spare Room by Helen Garner