The Spare Room
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2008
Z1457068
2008
single work
novel
(taught in 10 units)
'Helen lives in Melbourne, and her friend Nicola flies down from Sydney for a three-week visit. She will sleep in Helen's house, in her lovingly prepared spare room. This is no ordinary visit. Nicola has advanced cancer and is seeking alternative treatment from a clinic in Helen's city. From the moment Nicola steps off the plane, gaunt, staggering like a crone, her voice hoarse but still with something grand about her, Helen becomes her nurse, her protector, her guardian angel and her stony judge.' (Publisher's blurb)
In this thematically structured unit students will explore some of the literary genres centred on the construction of an individual self. Genres covered might include autobiography, diary writing, first-person fiction, life writing, collective storytelling, lyric poetry, dramatic monologue. Topics covered might include gendered identity, racialised identity, the use of idiom, the question of ‘voice’, conflicted identities, the fractured self, the exiled self, psychological theories of identity.
