A Novel Set in Australia

The Spare Room, by Helen Garner, is a slim volume, more a novella than a full length novel. Just finished it yesterday, after a quick reading. I carried it wherever I went, ran through pages when I was waiting, or resting after a long walk in the Rose Garden in front of the Santa Barbara Mission.

With the garden full of blooming colourful roses, in different stages of flowering, and vivid and various colours, reading this book there was an irony in itself. The story about two friends, Nicola and Helen, where Nicola comes to Helen's house for 3 weeks to get alternative treatment for her terminal stage cancer, is full of phrases and problems of disease, doctors, medicine and prognosis or lack of it.

But to Nicola, this visit came as the time when she realized the nearness of death, the certainty of it, and the futility of treatments when everything failed. She learnt to accept her situation and its inevitability. With acceptance came the wisdom of seeing the real situation, and to make the best of it.