The Spare Room: Helen Garner

In The Spare Room Helen Garner returns to fiction to write a story that could have easily found itself on the non-fiction shelf. Helen, a grandmother and writer perched in suburban Melbourne bliss next to her daughter's house, frets over the state of her spare room before the arrival of an old Bohemian friend and Sydney resident, Nicola. Suffering from cancer that has entered bones and liver, Nicola has asked Helen for a bed for three weeks while she undergoes an alternative therapy course that will "have the cancer on the run".

Despite objecting to Nicola's contestable treatment (and her posh and formal demeanour), Helen assumes the role of palliative care nurse and matron, changing sheets and imploring Nicola to take stronger drugs to ease the pain.

While visiting a mutual friend, Nicola's imperious charade results in her belittling Helen's dutiful acts, pushing Helen up against her own boundaries of good will. Nicola's niece, Iris, flies in to assist, and Helen finds the gumption to confront Nicola about her charlatan therapy centre and her denial of the inevitability of death. When a scan reveals life-saving surgery is needed, Helen's breaking point is long surpassed and she must wrangle with herself about her duty and place in Nicola's life.

In this short and engaging tale Garner has presented the reader with an imperfect protagonist who approaches the summit of what Bakhtin called the "dialogic" nature of argument. Helen is torn by the duty to be loyal to a friend and to act ethically, but also by the duty to self-preserve. Pleasingly, she finds no easy answers.

This battle of will, ethics and ultimately love is transcribed with Garner's use of terse and visual words and phrases that transport the reader to a very recognisable Melbourne home. Candid humour ("The station was a seven-minute walk from my house, twenty if you had cancer") adds to the humanity of both Helen and Nicola's dilemma. Garner may have redefined what is fiction and non-fiction yet again.

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