“The Spare Room is a perfect novel, imbued with all Garner's usual clear-eyed grace but with some other magnificent dimension that hides between the lines of her simple conversational voice. How is it that she can enter this heart-breaking territory--the dying friend who comes to stay--and make it not only bearable, but glorious, and funny? There is no answer except: Helen Garner is a great writer; The Spare Room is a great book.” —Peter Carey

“I very much admire The Spare Room. It's cleanly-written, sharp, with the authority of lived experience but an artist's penetration of the issues. It provides a portrait very hard to erase, of a child's ego trapped in a failing and ageing body, and it raises uncomfortable questions: what are the limits of friendship? Who will care for a generation that thought it would never get old?” —Hilary Mantel, author of Beyond Black and Giving Up the Ghost

“Swift, beautiful, and relentless, The Spare Room is a brutal novel in the best sense.” —Alice Sebold