Long before the concept of autofiction entered the conversation, Helen Garner was confronting the messy chaos of existence in a manner that managed to be at once analytical and empathetic. In novels like Monkey Grip (1977) and in-depth reporting like This House of Grief  (2014), she balanced her clear-eyed observation of facts with an almost clinical dissection of her feelings arising from them. This is particularly true of her 2008 novella, The Spare Room. Like several of her other novels, it is based on an episode in her life. Garner has claimed: ‘Maybe my right place to work is down a fissure between fiction and whatever the other thing is. Down a crack.’ Here she questions the limits of love when confronted with the immanent inevitability of death.