Exceptional . an unsettling and skilled work that raises important questions about the process of dying and what caring well for the dying requires . So powerful is The Spare Room's communication of the the triumphs and failures involved in dying . [that] the reader painfully ricochets between the various positions . Somehow as we read we actually become these characters . This extraordinary effect results in an uncomfortable read. Yet it is also an oddly exhilarating book - often funny, and grounded in a kind of ordinariness that is deeply restorative.