Comments on: Helen Garner’s The Spare Room Left Me Staring at the Wall http://blogs.crikey.com.au/literaryminded/2008/09/28/helen-garners-the-spare-room-left-me-staring-at-the-wall/ Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:27:46 +1100 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: - World Class Ebooks http://blogs.crikey.com.au/literaryminded/2008/09/28/helen-garners-the-spare-room-left-me-staring-at-the-wall/comment-page-1/#comment-598 - World Class Ebooks Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:19:29 +0000 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/literaryminded/?p=262#comment-598 [...] Festivals. Read my ‘responsive’ interview with him here. The Spare Room - Helen Garner. Which left me staring at the wall. Wintering: a Novel of Sylvia Plath - Kate Moses. An elegant, quiet book. Not reviewed on LM but [...]

...] Festivals. Read my ‘responsive’ interview with him here. The Spare Room – Helen Garner. Which left me staring at the wall. Wintering: a Novel of Sylvia Plath – Kate Moses. An elegant, quiet book. Not reviewed on LM but [...

]]> By: LiteraryMinded http://blogs.crikey.com.au/literaryminded/2008/09/28/helen-garners-the-spare-room-left-me-staring-at-the-wall/comment-page-1/#comment-358 LiteraryMinded Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:26:37 +0000 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/literaryminded/?p=262#comment-358 Athill has it spot on. Garner certainly has a finely honed instinct, and it is a wonderful book Diana, thanks. :-) Athill has it spot on. Garner certainly has a finely honed instinct, and it is a wonderful book Diana, thanks. :-)

]]> By: Diana Gribble http://blogs.crikey.com.au/literaryminded/2008/09/28/helen-garners-the-spare-room-left-me-staring-at-the-wall/comment-page-1/#comment-357 Diana Gribble Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:00:33 +0000 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/literaryminded/?p=262#comment-357 It's a wonderful book. The narrator's voice reminds me of Monkey Grip and, because I'm so ancient, I remember some dismissive reviews that book provoked. (Helen Garner has published her diaries and calls it a novel.) This time around there's been more of the same. In a <a HREF="http://www. telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/06/28/bogar128.xml" rel="nofollow">review</A> of The Spare Room for London's Telegraph, Diana Athill explains the novelist's gift to those dull critics: 'A good book dictates its own form, as though it were compelled to be more than just a telling of what happened and must become both an artifact conveying the truth of those happenings and a thing to be valued for its own sake. The novelist Jean Rhys used to say: "A book has to have a shape, and life hasn't, that's the problem." Finding the shape, hitting on the right way to combine the pursuit of truth with the achievement of shape, demands a writer's instinct, something with which Garner is amply endowed. It has enabled her to make a fiercely truthful book that is also beautiful.' It’s a wonderful book. The narrator’s voice reminds me of Monkey Grip and, because I’m so ancient, I remember some dismissive reviews that book provoked. (Helen Garner has published her diaries and calls it a novel.) This time around there’s been more of the same. In a review of The Spare Room for London’s Telegraph, Diana Athill explains the novelist’s gift to those dull critics:

‘A good book dictates its own form, as though it were compelled to be more than just a telling of what happened and must become both an artifact conveying the truth of those happenings and a thing to be valued for its own sake. The novelist Jean Rhys used to say: “A book has to have a shape, and life hasn’t, that’s the problem.” Finding the shape, hitting on the right way to combine the pursuit of truth with the achievement of shape, demands a writer’s instinct, something with which Garner is amply endowed. It has enabled her to make a fiercely truthful book that is also beautiful.’

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