5/13/2023 0 Comments The Spare Room by Helen GarnerAs 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. Helen Garners perceptive novel confronts death, dying, and the boundaries of friendship. Garner paints Nicola’s unflinching optimism with a heavy hand, and her grand naïveté is unconvincing, a flaw that’s hard to overlook in a novel about a cancer patient. The central conflict of the story centers around these treatments: Helen fears they may be doing more harm than good, while Nicola has undying faith in the unorthodox practices of the Theodore Institute (these revolve around vitamin C injections), leading Helen to question her ability to care for someone so deep in denial. Helen prepares a room in her Melbourne home for Nicola, an old friend who travels from Sydney to begin a course of alternative treatment for bowel cancer. Skeptical of the medical establishment, and placing all her faith in an alternative health center, Nicola is determined to find her own way to deal with her. ) employs her signature realism in this stunted novel about the infuriating and eye-opening experience of caring for a terminally ill loved one. Helen has little idea what lies aheadand what strength she must musterwhen she offers her spare room to an old friend, Nicola, who has arrived in the city for cancer treatment. The Spare Room is a 2008 novel by Australian writer Helen Garner, set over the course of three weeks while the narrator, Helen, cares for a friend dying of.
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