I’m really excited to talk about this Helen Garner novel, The Spare Room, but first, let’s talk about how I came to be reading it. I was traveling with my best friend and her parents, which is the sort of thing you usually do in high school with people whose parents can afford to go nice places and yours can’t, so they bring you along, and you feel grateful and awkward and young, but this wasn’t like that, this was another kind of thing, which is when you and your best friend are really genuinely fond of your respective parents and welcome the opportunity to be with them as adults.
We were driving around, and my best friend’s family is Australian, while I am Canadian, so you can imagine the elaborate system of unnecessary apologies and “please, it’s my turn to take the middle seat,” “are you comfortable? yes! I’m quite comfortable” Commonwealth twitterings we engaged in, and the entire experience was lovely, and then we fell into talking about books. We were talking first about Paul Theroux, the travel writer who wrote my favourite super-weird book, Sir Vidia’s Shadow, about how he and V.S. Naipaul used to be besties, and then had a Falling-Out as a result of (among literally a thousand dishily-discussed things) Theroux finding all the books he’d written and then personally inscribed for Naipaul for sale in a London shop. It is seriously a book-length bitch session, and I could not love it more. I think I’ve mentioned this somewhere before, but I actually ran into two OTHER friends of Naipaul, who were, no joke, the “best friends from childhood” that Vanessa Bayer and Fred Armisen play on SNL, and asked them within four seconds of being introduced if they had read Sir Vidia’s Shadow, and they said: “Oh, of COURSE. We all have! Thousands of times! But we tell him we haven’t, and we hide it when he comes over.”
V.S. Naipaul: your friends are reading Paul Theroux’s book about you behind your back.
Anyway, we were talking about Theroux because he happens to be JUSTIN THEROUX’S UNCLE, as in the future Mr. Jennifer Aniston, and I immediately began composing “Small Talk Between Paul Theroux and Jennifer Aniston on Her Wedding Day,” which you’ll read in these pages should they ever get around to closing that deal, and then the conversation turned to Helen Garner. Whew. Aren’t you glad you waited for that?
My best friend and her mother told me that Helen Garner is an Australian who writes these clear, short, fabulous novels, as well as occasionally problematic works of non-fiction, and I immediately needed to read The Spare Room and Monkey Grip. So, of course, I did, because finding a brilliant female novelist you haven’t heard of is a joyous occasion. Perhaps I can spark such a moment for you? Try Mary Wesley (see below.)
Guys, The Spare Room is an incredible novel. It’s the story of a woman whose friend comes to stay with her while undergoing cancer treatment, and the ensuing chaos. Female friendship, illness, alternative medicine gone awry, passivity, anger, grief. It also seemed very Canadian to me, which happens a lot with Australian novels (wait, have you read My Brilliant Career? a complete must for all bluestockings), in this case because the literature of illness in a nation with universal health care is profoundly, profoundly different. Not less grave, of course, but more cerebral and physical, with less of the financial horrorshow of, say, Michael Greenberg’s Hurry Down Sunshine, in which the scariest moment of the book is when Greenberg tells us that he and his wife were between health insurance plans and their daughter’s INPATIENT STAY would be completely out-of-pocket.
But The Spare Room is quite chilling and beautifully written. “Clear” is absolutely the best word for Garner’s prose style. I cannot speak to her non-fiction, but her novels are exact and distinct and free of wobble, and utterly worth your time.
Okay, don’t forget to buy some Mary Wesley. Not only is she a genius, she didn’t write her first novel for grown-ups until she was 71 years old. Look how much time you have left to be brilliant! See you next week.
Works Referenced:
Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career (Indiebound | Amazon)
Helen Garner, Monkey Grip (Indiebound | Amazon)
Helen Garner, The Spare Room (Indiebound | Amazon)
Michael Greenberg, Hurry Down Sunshine (Indiebound | Amazon)
Paul Theroux, Sir Vidia’s Shadow (Indiebound | Amazon)
Mary Wesley, The Camomile Lawn (Goodreads | Amazon)
Tags: books, helen garner, hilary mantel, mary wesley, paul theroux, reading with nicole, this week in reading
Promise me you’ll go look at Mary Wesley’s Wikipedia page.
NICOLE YOU’VE ENRICHED MY LIFE (again)
I wanted to quote the best bits but they are ALL SO GOOD. 16 governesses who didn’t like her! Helping her mother swim to her death!
“She suggested that she be photographed sitting up in [her custom coffin] for a feature in the magazine Country Living, but the idea was politely declined.” !!!
PROMISE.
“As a child, she had 16 governesses. When she asked her mother why they kept on leaving, she was reportedly told: “Because none of them like you, darling.””
Too good.
As a child, she had 16 governesses. When she asked her mother why they kept on leaving, she was reportedly told: “Because none of them like you, darling.”
She had an affair with the Czech war hero Heinz Otto Ziegler, with whom she had Toby Eady,[1] who became the literary agent of her biographer Patrick Marnham.
She had a sharp tongue. Following the death of her father in 1961, her mother said: “I’m not going to let that lingering death happen to me. When the time comes I’m going to crawl to the Solent and swim out.” Wesley replied with feeling: “I’ll help you”.
THIS IS THE BEST WIKIPEDIA PAGE EVER
She provided her reminiscences from her sick bed, and commented: “Have you any idea of the pleasure of lying in bed for six months, talking about yourself to a very intelligent man? My deepest regret was that I was too old and ill to take him into bed with me.”
“Late in life Wesley ordered her own coffin from a local craftswoman and asked it be finished in red Chinese lacquer. She kept it as a coffee table for some time in her sitting room. She suggested that she be photographed sitting up in it for a feature in the magazine Country Living, but the idea was politely declined.”
New hero?
Late in life Wesley ordered her own coffin from a local craftswoman and asked it be finished in red Chinese lacquer. She kept it as a coffee table for some time in her sitting room. She suggested that she be photographed sitting up in it for a feature in the magazine Country Living, but the idea was politely declined.[13]
She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1995.
I need a cigarette, you guys.
Jinx.
I READ IT. I can’t believe I haven’t heard of Mary Wesley. I am so ashamed.
Oh I’m so glad you loved it. Have you read the Monkey Grip yet? One of my all time favourites. Her writing is so clear and precise and generous. that even though the Monkey Grip is about crippling heroin addiction, there are scenes so gorgeous that I want to jump into them.
“Books that seem very Canadian” is my new favourite literary sub-genre.
I’d like to add a word for Helen Garner’s collection Postcards From Surfers too, since it hasn’t been mentioned. It’s a terrific book, both of its time and enduring, and deserves more attention.
Yes to this!!!!!!! See also: My Hard Heart, which includes the novellas Honour and Other People’s Children.
I’m so thrilled to see Helen Garner get a mention that I finally signed up to say so. Love her uncanny knack for pulling apart female friendships and cataloguing all the small gestures women (we? me??) make in our efforts to unfray ourselves.
Nicole! Can you do a post on children’s books someday? I am a new aunt and I am going to buy my (currently only 2-month old) niece ALL THE BOOKS, but I only have a few clear favorites from my childhood. (See username, obviously). I’m sure you have great ideas, and I’d love to hear them!
I JUST READ The Camomile Lawn during an atypical summer heatwave in my Canadian town and adored it. Such charming views on polyandry (yay!) and pedophilia (not yay!) But I really think she did something interesting with the blah blah English upper class aesthetics novel.
Chilling novels about complicated female friendship are exactly what I always want to read, and also what I hope my wikipedia page one day says that I wrote.
Related: has anyone else read The Woman Upstairs?
Added to the Goodreads “want to read” list! Is there a Toast group on Goodreads? Should there be?
Ooh! There SHOULD be.
There definitely should be! And on it there should be a list of every book Nicole’s ever recommended so I can add them all to my to read list.
I second all of this.
Mary Wesley has been my assurance that I’m not a horrible failure for years, although I’ve never actually read one of her books or anything. Nor had I heard of Helen Garner before today. Because I was born in Australia and it seemed mandatory, I have read My Brilliant Career, which I loved (apart from the brief but horrifically racist inner monologue towards the end) and which is kind of the Aussie outback version of Jane Austen’s life.
“Janet Malcolm? She scorched The First Stone in the New Yorker but I was so thrilled by the idea of her having read me that I felt no pain.”
http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2010/december/…
Imagine being eviscerated by your idol in the New Yorker? The First Stone is an incredible book, I’ll have you know, Janet Malcolm!
"Janet Malcolm? She scorched The First Stone in the New Yorker but I was so thrilled by the idea of her having read me that I felt no pain."
http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2010/december/…
Imagine being eviscerated by your idol in the New Yorker? The First Stone is an incredible book, I'll have you know, Janet Malcolm!
Nicole! This series promises to empty my wallet and fill my bookshelves. Those little Amazon links are just so inviting…
Nicole! This series promises to empty my wallet and fill my bookshelves. Those little Amazon links are just so inviting…
writing always seemed to me like one of those talents that only get better with age. Like wine. And unlike gymnastics or violin, which you have to start at like, three, in order to make a career out of it.
I wanted to quote the best bits but they are ALL SO GOOD. 16 governesses who didn't like her! Helping her mother swim to her death!
Hey Nicole and Mallory, I went to click one of your amazon links when I wanted to order King Kong Theory this week (sorry Emily Books! I am not an ebook person yet), and I realized that when I click over to .ca from the .com site, the Toast purchase log thing doesn’t seem to transfer. Is there a way to order books from non-American sites in a way that will still support you guys? I would love to if I can!
I read this while in Australia! (The B&B I stayed in had a copy in the bathroom, and I flicked through whenever I went to brush my teeth or go to the loo.) It was great, although so very dreadful in parts.
(Also, argh, should clearly have come to the Toast sooner, because it took me about a dozen tries to find a working username. I can’t believe all the Old English I tried was no good.)