say a prayer for the dying

Peter Rose's ABR review of Helen Garner's first novel for fifteen years, The Spare Room, is online and (as a less refined person might say) SMMMMOKING.

This is probably the toughest review Garner's story about caring for a dying friend has had so far, opening as it does with the tart observation that this novella could easily have been written as nonfiction.

Hel’s pride is easily stung. As long as she has practical tasks – beds to strip and change, ‘straightforward tasks of love and order’ – she is composed, but soon she is worn out, anxious, resentful. There is no acknowledgment of her literary obligations or of her solitary nature. Hel seems most alive when she is on her own. The best writing in the book depicts sentience in solitude. A violent thrill runs down her arms and ‘seethes’ in her fingertips. Night noises lull her: ‘Something tiptoed across the leaf mulch outside my open window and paused there, breathing: to groom itself.’

Hel is almost professionally observant. Like Isabel Archer, she is ‘constantly staring and wondering’. Nothing escapes her: the neurosurgeon’s fat, penile Mont Blanc pen; the sort of men who can crack their spine and ‘make it crackle all the way down’...

When Nicola’s niece and her boyfriend pay a visit, the young woman is appalled by Nicola’s presumptuousness and her lengthy stay. Hel wants to sob with gratitude: ‘They were young, they were sane, and they were in my corner.’ While Nicola sleeps, the three of them laugh at her demands and swap stories about the inconvenience of it all. Not all readers – not all carers – will relish this Hobbesian pugilism.'

These are tough words for an uncompromising book which I am yet to read (doing that tidy thing that some of us do of getting my review reading out of the way first and saving TSR for 'afters'). Intriguingly, Rose seems to be looking for some respite himself from Garner's somewhat relentless evocation of anger as the enervating emotion it can so easily become, noting that this does not dissipate or evolve towards the novel's end.

Which makes for a powerful review from one of our best critical readers, and increases the pull of the unread book even more at my end.

(And yes, I'm also leaving it on the kids' shopping list for you-know-what day. Why do the bookshops parade all those pastel coloured books around for the day of buying big for female progenitors? Sussann's has BLACK japonaise-patterned flannel pyjamas this year. Get with the program, folks, get The Lost Dog out there for starters.)

Finally I must congratulate ABR for having such a sterling piece of criticism online for us linking folk. Luminous and numerous gold stars for you.

Comments

[fifi]

I have TSR ready at the top of my pile. I am reading Peter carey's Theft at the minute. (Since I am having a painting moment currently, this book is proving a nice parallel in funny ways..)

Is the main character called Hel? It is interesting that she ictionalised this account in a way, when I read Joe Cinque the agitation and anger never quite went away. It remains still. Perhaps fiction, having been read, can be filed away in a different part of the heart.

I have gave The Lost Dog to my favourite friend down in Canberra. It will be my present of choice or all concerned this year.

have a lovely weekend.

[genevieve]

Yes, Fifi, the main character is called Hel, and I'm finding this review quite a tease. I would love to read it this weekend, but I have to get through other things and juggle some contract work at the moment. Might get greedy later next week though...

I have finished The Lost Dog recently, but I am going to reread it at a later date. I think it's just me - the writing was beautiful, but some of it didn't grab me as much as I hoped it would. This sometimes happens when I'm a bit busy, so I'll give it some time and try again.

The cover, however, thanks to Caren Florance, its designer, is an antidote to all the Mama Day books that Bookseller and Publisher mag (March) seemed to think we would all want to read. Too Much Pink>...!!!

[Kerryn]

It's really interesting to read Peter's review of TSR (and yes, massive props for non-delayed online access) in the light of his own Rose Boys, where his immediate family and especially his father, in their role as carer over many years, were the opposite of enraged. (I met the great Bobby Rose a few times and he seemed to me to be the very gentlest and non-enraged of men, and of course Robert was his own son.) The circumstances and the caree were very different in all sorts of ways, but you can see that history of Peter's -- not just the events in the family's life but the profound thought Peter must have given to the whole 'carer role' thing again while he was writing the book -- pulling his thoughts on TSR in particular directions.

I know this because I got my snailmail copy today and so have also read James Ley's review of Tim Winton's Breath, run alongside a 'From the Archives' excerpt from his 2004 review of The Turning. Peter R's piece on Garner looks positively restrained beside that: of the title story, James L says '... the instant of revelation tak[es] place as [Rae] is being bashed and raped by her husband. The lugubrious symbolism leaves no doubt that this is intended as a beatific moment. ... The whole sorry episode rings false, leaving Rae's moment of triumph exposed as an appalling lie. 'The Turning' is, in short, a nasty piece of work whose unredeemed ugliness is recommended only for those seeking confirmation that Christianity is sexist and repulsively masochistic.'

Which was pretty much exactly what I thought. James L likes Breath better, as do I.

[genevieve]

Rose's comments in this review do give pause, though. Characteristically clear and incisive rather than brutal, of course - but tough all the same - "Hobbesian"?? whew.

I am going to hang fire on the carer perspective, given my own perspective of course - until I've read TSR. But Rose Boys is certainly one of the most beautifully written pieces of 'carer lit' I've ever come across. Others in this category include, from the autism field, The Siege by US classics professor, Clara Claiborne Park, and one by a Melbourne woman, sadly no longer with us, called Joan Hundley, whose book, The Small Outsider, my baby sister stole obligingly from the school library for me twenty years ago this May. I had better hoof it down there and donate them a coupla updated titles, I think. It's time.
( I should quote from the last page of Joan's book here sometime - she took her son to visit Alan Marshall after her book was published. It's pretty cool.)

We have The Turning here. I didn't get past the opening, I think and it's been shelved for a while. You have sprinkled "Christian" a couple of times through your recent review of Breath in the Weekend Oz, I noticed. That piqued my interest too.

[Kerryn]

Yep -- Tim W is of course an avowed Christian and inevitably that is the worldview that informs his fiction. What I was mainly trying to do was acknowledge that as respectfully as a non-Christian can, and factor it into what I was saying. You can't really talk about Winton's fiction without mentioning his religion; to do so would be to ignore a large elephant in a small room. I think (though I may be wrong) that he would be the first to agree with this.

[genevieve]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but where do you get the idea from that the room is small, Kerryn? Or even that the elephant is all that large? I'm thinking small, quiet and fairly docile, in a large Rick Amor-sized lobby.

[dysthymiac]

Hi Genevieve - thanks for your visit at my place. This is a link to more sadness about the elegant Crazy Horse: http://www.indians.org/welker/crazyhor.htm

This week I saw the Garner child on a TV program, her father featured in Friday's Australian, and of course I read the large weekend features on TSR in the recent weekend magazines, Age & Austn.
Apparently, genuine Writers are those who absolutely MUST write, so of course their own milieu is bound to comprise it all; but I do wonder what the NOK of the deceased friend are feeling about this 'use'.
Maybe it is not enough of a gloss-over, to pen "it is indeed a great honour to make up a bed for a guest in one's home" (or whatever she said).

are all clever women abrasive by default? (thinking here of my hero Dr. Professor Greer)

[genevieve]

Thanks for that link, D. I am going to look for Lou Diamond Philips on IMDB later and find that film - it may have been a telemovie of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee".
Not sure I share your concern about the relatives, I think they pretty much sent their concerns over to HG with their sick family member, didn't they. All of us know we have no control over versions of history that involve relinquishing responsibility.
As to the abrasions of clever women - hmmm. HG has exposed herself to that accusation with characteristic courage. It is, of course, also possible for male carers to be both clever and angry.
Anyhow, I'm being terse because I feel bad that I haven't read it! One post about two books I haven't read yet!! so bear with me, I'll buy it next week I think. Thanks for coming by :-)

[Ariel]

So ... have you read it yet? Curious to see what you think!

[genevieve]

Ariel, I have just received TSR as a gift - and have to read other things, so I shall have to wait a bit longer...:-)but will post if curiosity gets the better of me.