As the three weeks of the novel progress Helen becomes increasingly angry with Nicola for denying the seriousness of her illness, forcing those around her to do emotional work on her behalf in confronting her death, and in making light of them for doing so.

At the end of the novel, Nicola returns to mainstream oncology treatment, and the doctors find that some of her symptoms are due to cancer having destroyed part of her vertebrae.

[2] The publication of The Spare Room received considerable media coverage and the novel was favourably reviewed in several major Australian metropolitan newspapers.

[2][5] One noted some of the advantages of fiction, in that Garner was able to resolve the story in the novel in a way she could not in her major non-fiction works The First Stone and Joe Cinque's Consolation.

[4] Robert Dessaix wrote an extended review that although favourable argued that The Spare Room is not a novel, but closer to a piece of journalism or a report from a metaphorical battle front, particularly as the novel is highly focused on Helen's point of view and never on Nicola's interior experience.