(1998).
85) and Australian writer Murray Murray writer 85) Australian and
– (1992). In 2008 she returned to fiction to fiction she returned 2008 In (1992). genre.
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school teacher at various Victorian high high Victorian various at teacher school - , a fictional treatment of caring for a dying for a dying caring of treatment fictional , a , painted by Jenny Sages, was a finalist in the the in finalist was a Sages, by Jenny painted , , citing its depiction of urban life and and social life of urban depiction its , citing My Hard Heart: Selected Fictions Selected Heart: My Hard
Honour & Other People's Children: two stories two Children: People's Other & Honour
Jacques Portail (1980 Portail Jacques Helen Garner Helen -
Cosmo Cosmolino Cosmo Author Background True Stories True The Spare Room Spare The Monkey Grip Monkey year old students at Fitzroy High School". The case was widely widely was case The School". High Fitzroy at old students year The Spare Room Spare The (1985) and and (1985) -
(1977), relates the lives of a group of welfare recipients living in living recipients welfare of a of group the lives relates (1977),
(1984) and and (1984)
National Book Council, South Australian Premier's Award, New South New Award, Premier's Australian South Council, Book National Geelong, Australia Geelong, — 7 November 1942 7 November — —
Monkey Grip Monkey Wales Premier's Literary Award, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, Walkley Award Walkley for Fiction, Prize Stead Christina Award, Literary Premier's Wales Awards, Ned Kelly Award, Literary Kibble Nita Writing, Feature for Best Palmer Vance Awards, Literary Premier's Victorian Literature, for Prize Melbourne Award Jefferis Barbara Award, Literary Premier's Queensland Fiction, Prize for Birth Where Awards
• • •
style accommodation in Melbourne. Years later she stated that she had adapted it adapted she had that stated she later Years Melbourne. in style accommodation - Postcards from Surfers from Postcards The Children's Bach The Children's education lesson to her 13 her to lesson education - shape things so I can make them bearable or comprehensible to myself. It's my way of making making of way my It's myself. to comprehensible or bearable them make I can so things shape that I orof, afraid that I'm things live, people other seen and lived that I've of things sense for". long Wikipedia) from (adapted realism as being key aspects of later works in the sub in works of later aspects key as being realism novels later Her experiences. personal her adapt to continued she has books, subsequent In are: of publication with the writing has also She Osborne. Jenya friend of Garner's death and illness on the based cancer patient, collections: story short several published (1980), look quilt a patchwork to make "trying was like novels writing that 1985, in said, Garner things and people's, other of bits and lives own our of ofup scraps made is novel A seamless. collected of randomly full notebooks whole and the night of middle in the of we think to need I that is writing for reason initial "My that she said 1999, in an interview In details". In 2003 a portrait of Garner, titled of Garner, a portrait 2003 In Prize. Archibald number, in few relatively were writers when Australian time at a prominence to came Garner and academic Australian a novelty. considered by some, were, writers women Australian and was Garner career writing of her the beginning "From that writes Goldsworthy, Kerryn writer, a feminist". and a realist, a stylist, called, frequently as, and regarded novel, first Her student Book the National won it successful: very was The book diaries. personal her from directly applied retrospectively have Critics 1982. in a film into was turned and in 1978 Award Council describe to Lit Grunge the term Between 1966 and 1972 Garner worked as a high as a worked Garner 1972 and 1966 Between she whom Garner, Bill met and overseas travelled she also in 1967, time, this During schools. writer and musician the actor, child, only Her Australia. to on their return 1968 in married 1971. in ended marriage her and 1969, born in was Garner, Alice unscheduled an for "giving of Education Department the Victorian by was sacked she 1972, In sex notoriety. of a degree Garner bringing Melbourne, in publicised Jean times: more two married Garner married. no longer is She 1941). (born Bail Garner was born in Geelong, Victoria, the eldest of six children. She attended Manifold Manifold She attended children. of six eldest the Victoria, Geelong, born in was Garner went She Geelong. in The Hermitage then and School Grove State Ocean School, State Heights with graduating and Hall, Clarke Janet at residing Melbourne, of University the at on study to French. and English in majors with of Arts a Bachelor
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The Spare Spare The
eyed grace of her prose” prose” of her eyed grace - is a magical gem of a of gem magical a is
when she offers her spare room to room her spare offers when she —
that packs a huge punch, charting a charting punch, a huge that packs —
The Spare Room Spare The
175 pp. Picador 9780312428174 from an internationally acclaimed and award and acclaimed an internationally from The Spare Room Spare The 2010 Garner, Helen 13: — Book Summary - Helen Garner Helen ISBN The Spare Room Spare The
and what strength she must muster must she strength what and
— gripping, moving, and unexpectedly funny unexpectedly and moving, gripping,
is destined to be a modern literary classic. classic. modern literary a to be is destined — friendship as it is tested by the threat of death. the threat by tested as it is friendship Noble) & Barnes (from female of and limits joys the about writes Garner Helen years, fifteen in novel her first In clear “The of illness. pressure the transforming under friendship of a work “the as Carey by Peter hailed has been novel unsparing and funny this darkly in the globe, around reviewers awards, dazzling with Garlanded writer.” great Room publisher) the (from dying, the other called to care for her for care to called other the dying, author. winning idea has little Helen in need? friend a help to up give we must ourselves of much How ahead what lies of the Skeptical treatment. cancer for city in the arrived has who Nicola, old friend, an Nicola is center, health alternative an in all her faith placing and establishment, medical Helen advice of the regardless illness, with her deal to way own her find to determined offers. upside life own her not only turn will for survival Nicola’s battle follow, that the weeks In her. around of everyone those downalso but book A powerful, witty, and taut novel about a complex friendship between two women two between friendship complex a about novel taut and witty, A powerful,
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– . I –
tale tale -
lovely, lovely, fiction .
is all of is – magnetic
- – . Her feelings . Her feelings
no I’m not There’s no
is not just anis attack
slogs on
you! , and if youif were to from remove --
to about write it through again sheets and again, here I am - -- , you’ll of the know Helen some in and sometimes, inLovelyas "The -- The Spare Room seeds andseeds beads and vipassana. Now
–
is thatis of a seems fiction thatto havebeen made
Reviews
TV TV star from the British "Big Brother"who was once needs allneeds the help she can get. hasShe cancer in her liver - Joe Cinque’s Consolation
– that Nicola the onlyis one going this cancer is to kill. dying The
, or – Helen Garner Helen The Spare Room The Spare Room Spare The the mistakes of others. She’ll you tell things more cautious,writers nicer
– The First StoneThe First or
she does remembershe
–
. Shouldn’t . Shouldn’t they? Should they?
does whatdoes the best fiction it does: makes you stop arguing, in easythat way, flat about what
. She’s good. She’s company, good in clever andbook. a fierce She’s and she laughs;she’s anxious do. It reminds we us might not know what anyone should do, we have until to watch them Monkey Grip
who’s comingwho’s to stay, and thinking: what colour should they Helen’s be? friend, Nicola playful, aristocraticcareless, Nicola and her bones. the nextOver three weeks, Helen will change Nicola’s sweated bring her food and drink, her andtodrive the shabby little Theodore Institute to get the strange treatments that Nicola will makebelieves her cancer ‘disappear.’ Much of the special charge of Helen Garner’sHelen new novel starts with a woman called ‘Helen’ putting sheets forout fresh a friend and hate how stupid they have to be to keep believing. Nicola thinks Professor canTheodore
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should face the truth married inmarried front theof cameras this past month, providing anus of courage image in adversity, of fairy romance to the end. This vision of dying noble, as beautiful, even consoles us, assures us that somehow we can its remove sting. prolongedThe messiness of dying, is nothowever, the focus of our accounts, in prose or in pictures. theLike unseemly actuality of childbirth, publicly it is elided: Goody racked in pain, confined hospitalto bed,her is Dying, has it becomeseems, the province of nonfiction. chartingMemoirs the final illnesses parents,of relatives, mentors and, indeed, the authors arethemselves too numerous to cite. A number, including Mitch Albom's "TuesdaysWith Morrie" and Randy "The Pausch's Last have Lecture," become bestsellers. We have fortime death as a learning experience, at once real (it is movingmore to tous know that the personage under discussion once lived and breathed) and morally instructive (perhaps, from their wisdom, willwe learn andhow to live how to die). Jade Goody, a reality for reviled her racism and bad behavior, has late of been lionized facesas she death from cervical cancer: she No to one likes think about but dying, seem novelists scared to death well, inCharacters fiction don't spend timemuch dying anymore. Ofthey course die the shelves all the novels in which lost, is a life the stacks would be bare theyBones," speak to us from beyond theBut grave. the characters of today don't spend much time on the brutal labor dying.of but also knows Helen should The Spare Room people doing it. Readings.com.au Nicola comes from Old Money, but always tried ‘alternatives’she’s leading is this her into the world rooms of small where terminally ill people sit a for PowerPoint presentation on ‘High VitaminDosage’ C cures and the benefits of an Ozone Sauna. on this kind one of the of belief: kindest people in the book a boyis who Nicola gives some electro ‘healing’ patches. This helps novel you how imagine much you could want a dyingperson to they’re believe not dying ‘scoop’ or cancer ‘sweat’ out herof body. Her bright smiling lies Helenmake very angry and sad and tired, and busy; does her she jobs; she her rides bike, cooksshe and and cleans writes; she push up fast and very strong, and often shocked she’s to find that whatis she wants violence: to hit and smash to pieces. She lotsmakes of mistakes; that her keeps in pain; but herit keeps where canalso she see painfullywhere she’s interested in wouldn’t say. youShe’ll tell her dear dying friend isn’t doing such a good job of dying. you tell She’ll that, a lot of the time, she’s thinks her dear dying friend is an idiot. see you,see Helen Garner! That’s a special kind of pleasure, but also the harderthere’s pleasure of working to stop doing this. You can’t just asee fiction author, easyas that. We too often think writing is that the person who made it, but so much has here been carefully chosen, and so much carefully left out. Part of the fascination of fiction, especiallyfiction a like this, is that it can say both If you’ve read The Spare Room very closevery to the writers’ life. ‘Helen’ in thisbook a writer,is who in lives Melbourne, next door to her daughter, and as ‘Helen’ does this or that you want point at to the page and say: It’s
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on its -- chiefly, -- the --
this universalthis situation -- played aplayed significantThink role. how
-- week visit byweek her dying friend, Nicola, in a visit (continued) - we dowe not want to talk about it. --
Reviews Reviews Helen Garner Helen century death life, could not so easily be avoided; and so, in 19th - The Spare Room Spare The
"Gerasim did all this of easily, willingly and that with a kindliness Ivan the actual, hideous effort of dying -- -- that make her frighteningly ill. For a shelong time, refuses any care. palliative -- before Nicolabefore can finally, tearfully, concede that "death's at theend isn't it." of this, person protagonist named Helen;is the outlines of her life resemble her creator's), it -- - in the knowledge that death come will someday, too, for him. isGerasim's an awareness -- contemporary fiction. Publishers are waryof a subject so bleak. It maybe that writers, too, shy away the from topic: in a culture preoccupied with youth, beauty and death success, seems peripheral, a necessary but ignorable ill. Unless can we imbue it with meaning transcendence that all we so guiltily seek notIt was thus.ever In 19th century fiction, dying long it takes Emma Bovary tosuccumb to her arsenic, and the scrupulousdetail with which not foron the cameras. offer Nor are ofdepictions terminal sufferingoften found in
a long dying road -- truth than greater the sum of parts.its This short, passionate book all aspectsexplores of instruggle the tremendous, inevitable struggle. A triumph of art artifice, over Garner's novel does not spareus, nor itself. It usreminds that literature not only can, but the address must, most important becausesubjects, it does so in noways other can. form As (fictional)Helen (fictional) quotes King Lear: "Why shoulda dog, horse, a a rat life,/Andhave thou no breath at Made upall?" words they may be, but no lament has more true. rung Newsweek The fact thatThe Garner has written storythis as a novel rather than grants as a memoir her authorialgreater freedom, but it grantsalso her creation a status.different We are not asked tobelieve that Nicola actually andlived breathed (although one suspects that she did), just are not as we asked to that believe Helen's rage and compassion belong to Garner alone; instead, we confront situationthis own terms, purely on the merits of Garner's luminous, adamantine narrative. asJust Ivan Ilych bothis andisn't you, or both me, Helen and are also raised Nicola above themselves. Fiction offers a genuine transformation, a The beautyThe of this novel lies in insistence its on the frank and inescapable fight between and life death. Ivan wife isIlych's not wrong, after all, to want to room:flee the the laborof isdying agonizing for all concerned. areThere no lessons, clear no consoling homilies: is there a lot sweatof and and piss, alot sufferingof all around. time Over (who knew death could take so long?!) Nicolamust learn how to die, and must learn Helen to help her die, must learn to be Gerasim learned("I to wash as gently her arse as I had washed my sister's and my and mother's, someday as someone have will to wash mine.") Unprepared, Helen finds herself called upon to nurse her old friend in the most intimate ways, and all the Nicolawhile refuses to admit that dying, she is to Helen's fury: not "Death will be denied," Helen observes. "To try grandiose. it is It drives madness into the soul. It leaches out Itvirtue. injects poison into friendship, and a makes mockery love."of Eventually, Helen can bear it nolonger: "I wanted to say this: you're using that bloody clinic to distract … yourself from what you have to do … You've got to get ready." it is Yet still a long road which isHelen called upon to be and Gerasim cannot, for that at time least, fullyembrace the challenge; in which yearns,she Ivan like Ilych's family and colleagues, to turn her back on mortality: in "Death was my house. rulesIts pushed new life away with terrible force. I longed for the children next door, their small, determined bodies through which vitality surged …" Nicola ventures from her hometown of Sydney to Melbourne for alternative cancer treatment intensive doses of vitamin C Ilych found moving" which ofmost us would willingly ignore. AustralianThe Helenwriter Garner's new novel, "The Spare a Room," is bracing reminder that cannot. we Barely a (the novel first neverthelessis significantly not It amemoir. does notseek to instruct or to seeks, uplift: it rigorously and unflinchingly, to the tell truth. storyItHelen's is of the three the cold supper laid on Similarly, the dresser. in Tolstoy's masterpiece ofdying, "The Death of Ivan Ilych," we learn at the outset that "the veryfact of the death of someone to close them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling delightof that he had died andhadn't." Only they then does Tolstoy cast narrativehis back to Ivan life Ilych's brief and seemingly endless dying: "How about it came in the third month of Ivan illnessIlych's … Another two wentweeks by … Two weeks went by this like …" Who knew that death could take long? so His family can't stand it; only his rudely Gerasim, vital peasant servant, holds his legs and uncomplainingly him comfortgives Flaubert herrecords agonies. Remember, too, that his unflinching eye alights upon the indifferenceof the beforeliving the dead, as the pharmacist and the priest debate faith Emma's over corpse while snacking upon
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The Spare Spare The
Helen Garner Helen
Discussion Questions Discussion Questions The Spare Room Spare The
is a novel, Helen Garner is often asked why she and the narrator narrator the and she why asked often is Helen Garner is a novel,
brings to mind? How much room, energy, and patience does the narrator, the narrator, does patience and energy, much room, How mind? to brings
The Spare Room Room Spare The
1. Beyond the guest room in Helen’s home, are there other images the title title the other images there are Helen’s home, in room the guest 1. Beyond Room spare? to have Helen, its and rewards, are its What with caregiving. experiences own your 2. Discuss the until you with stay to Nicola like a friend allowed have you Would difficulties? versus those who fight it? it? fight who those versus unfold illness Nicola’s does How life? her in episode this about remember will Bessie What 10. a child? of eyes the through as seen sometimes it is ten. Why in chapter feats beautiful performs who magician the Discuss 11. magic? in believe to Is it harmful thinking? rational suspend togood publisher) the (from 7. Though 7. Though to wanted she because own name her she used that said has She name. same have the she has that anger, particularly emotions, troubling deeply certain of the reality acknowledge to reading your it affect did How loved. she whom people dying for caring while experienced writers? both are Helen and called are both character main and author the see that away? someone to turn is it acceptable When culture. and of hospitality notion the 8. Discuss what? matter no welcomed, be must guests Which What options. of run out she has that signal other any or hospice resists bitterly 9. Nicola death accept who those days: their final to have people approaches the different for accounts with an opportunity for a long goodbye? goodbye? a long for opportunity with an characters? her by faced reality raw the with humour balance Garner Helen does 4. How in compatible they Are Nicola? and Helen between the friendship describe you would 5. How to in a turn you would friend Which other? each with honest they Are ways? many very similar situation? who Helen, to herself comparing life, her wasted she has fears that Nicola seven, chapter 6. In What is Helen. and Nicola by illustrated of lives kinds two the Discuss family. her to is close through ourselves for create we do “families” of What sorts a life? of measure the best friendships? very end? end? very point is what At mortality? own their handle humans way the about is universal 3. What lives, our of outcome the to know better Is it terminal? is illness her that accept to able Nicola
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