Open door policy for a most unwelcome guest

Published on Thursday 24 July 2008 12:46

BOOK review

The Spare Room

by Helen Garner

Canongate, 195pp, 12.99

PUBLICATION OF A NOVEL BY Helen Garner is now an occasion. She is a writer whose work has jouissance – that squeeze of memorable language, a way of looking. For the reader, 16 years of deprivation have now elapsed since the coming of Cosmo Cosmolino, her last book of fiction, which was shortlisted for Australia's prestigious Miles Franklin Award.

Her reputation for making herself conspicuous in her work is a Garner hallmark. In the exhilarating Monkey Grip, her debut 31 years ago, she gazed through the Garner prism at life in the bower of a Melbourne hippie commune, bumming along on welfare.

Australia – and good old traditional Melbourne more dramatically so – has altered since then, gone arty, cool, bohemian, chic and self-consciously cosmopolitan. Garner's bohemian class have evolved, still sniffing the scent of the laid-back existence while embracing the sundry pleasures of gardening, walking, grandchildren, wine, good conversation, creative swearing, the sharing of memories and friendships.

Nostalgic and poignant, but never maudlin, The Spare Room revives that spirit, plaits those same strands. It is a whisper, a stream of tears, a cri de coeur, a howl of frustration and naked anger.

Its pages are hogged by the voice of Helen (who is, predictably, a writer), and her friendship (a 15-year bond, which in the scheme of things isn't long), with bohemian sixtysomething Nicola who hails from north Sydney.

Affinity, a kindred spirit and, yes, love, are what bind them close together, and the excruciating nature of Nicola's suffering from cancer, brings them yet closer.

Helen is smoothing the crisp pink sheets on the spare room's bed as the novel opens, preparing the mood as well as the comfort, thinking: "…she (Nicola] had a famous feel for colour, and pink is flattering even to skin that has turned yellowish". There is a thoughtfulness here, an uptilt, despite the decided prognostic gloom of the tell-tale skin. But Helen is clueless about the trials that await them.

The portents are clear: a newly hung mirror collapses and shatters in Nicola's room. Then Leo, a psychiatrist friend of Helen's, derides the projected alternative therapy – a course of peroxide drips, intravenous doses of vitamin C, and something ("Whatever that is") called glutathione – as "bullshit". And all this before Nicola shows her face.

And when she does it is clear she is heavily in denial, hooked on the notion that the institute in Melbourne can actually save her. To Helen the place is a nest of charlatans filling their coffers, while swelling Nicola's veins and organs with useless gunk, and leaving Helen to nurse her agonised friend through days and nights of hell and sopping sheets.

Helen's son-in-law and daughter live next door with granddaughter Bessie. We sense that part of Helen's life receding inexorably as Nicola makes demands, succumbs to the "bullshit" at the clinic, at first refusing to agree to conventional pain relief which would grant respite to harassed Helen. The latter therefore passes quickly from riled frustration into anger, not least with the hacks who are fleecing her friend, and not least with Nicola's own selfish delusion.

The book charts the dip in Nicola's graph, the torment, the anguish, and Nicola's resolute refusal to face the truth about her own death. Iris her niece, who had been her carer, pays a visit and she and Helen roll their eyes in solidarity, their patience sorely tested.

The end is predictable, the journey repetitious. Helen passes through a birthday (it's the same date as Garner's), and together, (on what is a writing assignment for Helen), they see a magic show.

There "are many ways to make a thing disappear" the magician tells them. The notion takes hold. Nicola visits an oncologist, hears the worst and prepares for the ultimate disappearance.

What might be gloomy is never sombre. Garner's spirit, honest and piercing, skewers both Nicola and Helen. Based as it is on real life events, the novel eschews simple autobiography or memoir by the extent to which its author, instead of reporting events and moods, inhabits the "I" voice and gives it colour. Her use of language is sublime – verbs and adjectives precise and often surprising ("fatigue rinsed me from head to foot").

Think Anita Brookner with added viscera. Angela Carter playing the lyre. Or simply the sound of life hooked up to a heady cocktail of love and death.