The Spare Room is Helen Garner’s first work of fiction in 15 years. The Australian writer is also well-known for her non-fiction and this novel appears to teeter on the edge of both. The main character is named Helen and like the author she is a writer living in Melbourne.

Helen’s personal and professional lives are put on hold with the arrival of a cancer-stricken friend from Sydney. Nicola is a graceful, charismatic hippie, unmarried and childless in her late-60s. She has an extended family of friends across the country who take turns looking after her, as she grows unable to take care of herself. She plans to stay with Helen for three weeks, the duration of an alternative treatment program at a shady private clinic, the Theodore Institute. Her cancer is in its late stages and she has a long line of failed treatments behind her, but Nicola has utter faith in the clinic’s ozone saunas and vitamin C injections. She plans to be well in no time.

It quickly becomes apparent to Helen that the Theodore Institute is a sham (one of Dr. Theodore’s miraculous cures for cancer are coffee enemas — but he insists only organic coffee be used). Nicola refuses to acknowledge this; she has banked her dwindling reserve of hope on the treatment. She laughingly dismisses Helen’s fears of caring alone for a cancer patient through arduous, pain-filled nights and she refuses to acquire adequate pain medication, seeing it as an admission of the severity of her illness.

Nicola rejects the possibility of death, though death is clearly near. Helen must withstand her friend’s unshakable optimism and deal with her own mounting anger. Tension builds in the household until Helen, wrung-out, feels it must come to a head: “Death will not be denied. To try is grandiose. It drives madness into the soul. It leaches out virtue. It injects poison into friendship, and makes a mockery of love.”

The Spare Room deals with some heavy topics: cancer, pain and death. However, it is not a heavy read. Written in a conversational tone, the book is tightly written and is easy to read in a single sitting. While Garner’s writing is not weighed down by her themes, she does not make light of them. Instead, Garner gives us a frank, sincere account that explores the emotional complexities of friendship and illness.