One of my favourite internet bookgroup friends – the one who gave me the Jane Austen diary – has just posted, on a listserv we belong to, a link to The Guardian’s list of books that got away over the last decade. Now, that’s a new take on lists isn’t it?
The spare room cover (Courtesy: Text Publishing)
They asked people like publishers, literary agents and translators to nominate books that didn’t make, but they think should have, “best of best” lists. I’ve only read one of the books nominated, Helen Garner’s The spare room. It was nominated by Jamie Byng, the Managing Director of Canongate which published it! Fair enough. I’m sure they published many other books that didn’t make the “best of the best” lists either so his selection has some credibility. I think he hits the nail on the head when he says it is “deceptively slight”. It does seem pretty simple but Garner is a great writer, and an unflinchingly honest one too. Put these together and the result is a compelling book, even though Lisa at ANZLitlovers doesn’t quite agree. Actually, both of us disagree with much of the way Garner views her world but I admire her nonetheless. Read this:
The one thing I was sure of, as I lay pole-axed on my bed that afternoon … was that if I did not get Nicola out of my house tomorrow I would slide into a lime-pit of rage that would scorch the flesh off me, leaving nothing but a strew of pale bones on a landscape of sand.
Sometimes Garner fills me with a similar rage, but when she presents me with writing and imagery as powerful and as fresh as this I can’t help but love her at the same time…and agree that Jamie Byng has a bit of a point.
(NB. The funny thing, though, is that The spare room won a few awards in Australia so I’m wondering how valid a selection it really is in this particular list.)
Helen Garner
The spare room
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2008
195pp
ISBN: 9781921351396
Whispering Gums 