Robert Dessaix's review of Helen Garner's The Spare Room (April) seemed reasonable - questioning but positive - until I read the book. Then I realised his words had subtly undermined not only the book, but the integrity of the author.
Dessaix's main point is that The Spare Room is not a novel, as Garner describes it, but a "report from the suburban front line" - in other words, a piece of women's journalism. He goes on to accuse "Helen", the book's narrator, of religious hypocrisy and Howardish superiority about families. And of unkindness towards the sick friend she is caring for, by not comforting her when she declared her life a waste.
If "Helen" is truly Helen, as Dessaix states, these are cruel personal criticisms of a colleague, not objective discussions of a character in a novel. Garner is a successful writer of fiction and non-fiction. If she says this book is a fiction based on real-life experience, why wouldn't we simply believe her? There is an ethical difficulty when an author declares her work to be non-fiction, when it is invented, but the reverse is not true. Garner chose fiction (it seems to me) because she didn't want to describe events journalistically but rather to freely and truthfully explore the painful complexities of the relationship between the dying and their carers.
Dessaix's accusations against the character of Helen are also unfair. She did not withhold comfort from her friend; she waited until she found words that were both truthful and reassuring. Then she spoke of her friend's generosity and fidelity and the way she made people feel free. She reflected before she spoke, so that the words came from the deepest part of her and had real meaning and force.
Garner's novel is wise and beautiful and also courageous in a way that Dessaix's review is not. I find The Spare Room nearly perfect, though I wasn't quite convinced by the small, penultimate "I didn't know then" chapter, which seems to have been thrown as a life raft to the reader. On the whole, I would rather have risked drowning with angry, loving Helen and her clean sheets.
