The Spare Room (Of Elves and Men) follows naturally from the author's preceding title, Diary of the Last Man, in that it is an examination of the struggle between hope and despair concerning the future of mankind given man's persistent and some might say burgeoning inhumanity to man. It is for the reader to decide whether The Spare Room is a humorous book with serious undertones, a serious book with humorous overtones, an allegorical commentary on the so-called 'human condition', or all of these things. It explores various aspects of that condition through the relationship between the storyteller, who remains nameless and represents a sympathetic everyman, and Mr Potts, an eccentric figure whose questioning attitude and distrust of human nature are ridiculed by the local populace from whom he is estranged and isolated by choice. Preferring his odd and unclear relationship with Elves, Mr Potts lives alone and is befriended by the storyteller from whose pen the whole narrative unfolds following Mr Potts's decease. As it unfolds, the narrative, now light-hearted, now sombre, should leave us with the distinct impression that wisdom and commonsense are all too often tragically mistaken for irrelevant and worthless eccentricities.