Media Reviews

The Sunday Times (UK) In its bleak and highly comic storytelling, in spite, or perhaps, because of its subject matter, The Spare Room could be called a comedy of manners, in that its concern is how people behave towards each other and the repercussion of that behavior. Its embattled characters are so real that by the last page you feel not just that you have read a magnificent novel but that you have experienced life itself.

The Telegraph (UK) Gripping and invigorating. . . . [Garner's] style, conversational but never slack, is natural, supple, and exact, her way of seeing is acute and sympathetic, you receive an instant impression of being in the company of a congenial friend and it is impossible not to follow her as she brings to life the events and feelings she is exploring. . . . Garner is amply endowed . . . with a writer’s instinct. It has enabled her to make a fiercely truthful book that is also beautiful. . . . A book so sensitive, sad, funny and alive that it surely deserves an honored place on many shelves.

The Australian - Geoffrey Lehmann The Spare Room is a story of tough love and friendship and amazement at the bravado and resourcefulness of human beings in the face of death, written in a prose that has surgical precision. This reviewer knows at least one old man who does read novels: himself. Read this novel. It is truer than nonfiction.

Kirkus Reviews Wit, simplicity and scorching honesty distinguish an understated triumph.

Library Journal Garner's neat prose suits these two crusty dames, who drag themselves through a situation where, ultimately, love is all that counts. Highly recommended

Publishers Weekly As it wears on, the narrative becomes clouded by litanies of worsening symptoms and platitudes about death, and Helen's bickering about the treatment-while valid-become grating and tiresome.

 Alice Sebold Swift, beautiful, and relentless, The Spare Room is a brutal novel in the best sense.

Reader Reviews

Lee
The Spare Room
Helen Garner has written a sensitive novel about friendship and death. She cleverly knits them together and writes a profound and gratifying book. Her setting is Australia, and Helen, who lives in Melbourne, is expecting an acquaintance Nicole, ...   Read More Hayley H.
Wonderful
I knew this book was a novel when I purchased it but forgot very quickly once I began. I am currently caring for a cancer patient at home and have been finding this experience almost unbearable at times, just watching his slow and heartbreaking ...   Read More Carole
A spare but not sparse read - The Spare Room
In the hands of a lesser writer the theme of this novel -- a woman who takes into her home an in-denial, dying friend -- could slip into the maudlin, mawkish, or morose. In the capable hands of Helen Garner, it never does. While emotions of fear, ...   Read More Marion
Could You Do This?
"The Spare Room" is told by Helen, whose friend, Nicola, suffering from late-stage cancer, asks to stay in her home for three weeks. Nicola has come to Helen's city to seek help through alternative medicine: deplorable and absurd practices which ...   Read More

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