Five stars here equals "I LOVED IT". It's hard to say love in conjunction with the topic of this book -- a friend caring for a friend with terminal cancer.

Short, with an honest and succinct use of words to portray a technicolor view of the situation, Garner's book allows the reader to live the three weeks a friend occupies the Melbourne guest room of the protag. That's not enough to make this book 5-star quality; it takes the author's ability to portray so accurately the fear, anger, frustration and guilt felt by caretakers everywhere -- at least she evoked the feelings that crushed my heart and mind caring for a cancer patient at home over 20 years ago. I couldn't read this book fast enough -- now I'm not sure if that was because I was so absorbed into the feelings or if I wanted to escape the feelings and move on -- and that's what I felt and couldn't do back in 1988.