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The Spare Room (2008)

by Helen Garner(Favorite Author)

3.59 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1847672655 (ISBN13: 9781847672650)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Canongate Books

review 1: This really felt like simply a very long short story. It covers a very limited time and place and in a way, nothing much happens, except internally, perhaps, and even that isn't very explicit. Additionally, I had a hard time grasping the tone--it felt terribly serious throughout and in several places the speaker states that she and others "fell about laughing" or "shouted with laughter" or "bent over double, laughing" and I couldn't pinpoint what, exactly, had been so funny. The story covers two dear friends who are facing a crisis, but I did not grasp what made these women friends in the first place (a past is alluded to but frustratingly never fleshed out) and even more so, why they remained friends. Reading the back cover it seems this is the first novel in a very long ... moretime by Garner, and that unfortunately shaped my feeling that this was, indeed, perhaps not her best work.
review 2: Cualquiera que haya cuidado a un enfermo en estado terminal conoce la sensación de desamparo y miedo que le embarga cuando ve el funesto final cerca. Desde los momentos de desesperación a los ataques de rabia. La escritora es capaz de meterte de lleno en esta pequeña historia sin ahondar en ningún momento en la tragedia ni la lágrima fácil, centrándose más en el perfil psicológico de la cuidadora que en el de la enferma. Y sin establecer juicios de valor ante las decisiones de ambas, con un final que, desde mi punto de vista, es perfecto. less

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