{"id":41,"date":"2009-02-27T13:05:18","date_gmt":"2009-02-27T12:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=41"},"modified":"2020-07-17T10:37:51","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T09:37:51","slug":"book-review-the-spare-room-by-helen-garner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2009\/02\/27\/book-review-the-spare-room-by-helen-garner\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review: The Spare Room by Helen Garner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman\">Helen Garner\u2019s <em>The Spare Room<\/em> (published by Canongate) is an exploration of the emotional and practical turmoil engendered by caring for someone who is grasping at straws to evade the terminal truth of their illness.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: small;font-family: Times New Roman\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman\">The narrative probes a friendship between two feisty women when it is taken to new levels of intensity by a clash in ideology. Helen (who deliberately shares the author\u2019s name) starts off with noble intentions. She prepares her spare room with due consideration for longstanding-friend Nicola\u2019s feng shui inclinations, hoping to strike just the right balance between practicality and homeliness. Nicola, riven with cancer, is coming to Sydney to spend a small fortune on alternative therapy at the Theodore Institute. Predictably, the Institute proves fantastically adept at sales talk but medically deeply dubious. Nicola emerges from intravenous Vitamin C treatment and ozone cupping weakened and wracked with excruciating pain, but she holds out against morphine until she \u2013 and, more particularly, Helen \u2013 can bear it no longer. Nicola is coaxed into reengaging with orthodox medicine by her outraged and exhausted friend.<!--more--><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: small;font-family: Times New Roman\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman\">Helen is not unsympathetic to alternative medicine, but she is driven to distraction by her friend\u2019s vulnerability to exploitation \u2013 financial and emotional. Helen begins to think of herself in terms of being made ill with the burden of caring: \u2018I folded my arms and closed my eyes. Let me pass out now,\u2019 she pleads, \u2018Please, Dr Maloney, take me to the hospital. Put me in a bed and spread a cotton blanket over me. Let me lie there alone in silence till this is over.\u2019<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: small;font-family: Times New Roman\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman\">Garner blends memoir with fiction with much of the book unashamedly autobiographical. In an interview with <em>The Austrian Times <\/em>(29 March 2008) she said that she felt alarmed by violent emotion that nursing sick loved ones evoked in her: \u201cI was shocked by how much anger there is. I had an urge to own those feelings. I didn\u2019t make them up. While I was writing <em>The Spare Room<\/em> I thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to look really bad in this book, there\u2019s no redeeming this kind of awful, ugly emotion\u2019, and I thought, \u2018I\u2019m not going to change it. I\u2019ll call the character Helen and admit to those feelings.\u2019\u201d By rights this ought to be a morbid tale, but Garner\u2019s mixture of wit and richly descriptive prose has a disconcertingly heartening effect.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: small;font-family: Times New Roman\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman\">This book has much to offer teachers and students of the medical humanities. For starters, it is a slim volume, making it an ideal read within a busy curriculum. It offers a startling and unsentimental insight into the implications of the role of the non-professional carer. Ethical questions are raised about a host of issues, not least the about patient choices with respect to medical intervention. The book facilitates debate about the boundaries between fiction and memoir, and where those margins should be drawn with respect to confidentiality. All in all, this book would be a worthwhile addition to the shelves of anyone interested in narrative approaches to illness.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Helen Garner\u2019s The Spare Room (published by Canongate) is an exploration of the emotional and practical turmoil engendered by caring for someone who is grasping at straws to evade the terminal truth of their illness. \u00a0 The narrative probes a friendship between two feisty women when it is taken to new levels of intensity by [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2009\/02\/27\/book-review-the-spare-room-by-helen-garner\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2965],"tags":[15063],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-review"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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