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Stone Yard Devotional
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024
Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Australian outback. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.
But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past.
Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Australian outback. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.
But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published October 3, 2023
About the author
Charlotte Wood
23 books701 followersCharlotte Wood is the author of six novels and two books of non-fiction. Her new novel is The Weekend.
Her previous novel, The Natural Way of Things, won the 2016 Stella Prize, the 2016 Indie Book of the Year and Novel of the Year, was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction.
Her non-fiction works include The Writer’s Room, a collection of interviews with authors about the creative process, and Love & Hunger, a book about cooking. Her features and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Literary Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Saturday Paper among other publications. In 2019 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant services to literature, and was named one of the Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence.
Her latest project is a new podcast, The Writer's Room with Charlotte Wood, in which she interviews authors, critics and other artists about the creative process.
Her previous novel, The Natural Way of Things, won the 2016 Stella Prize, the 2016 Indie Book of the Year and Novel of the Year, was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction.
Her non-fiction works include The Writer’s Room, a collection of interviews with authors about the creative process, and Love & Hunger, a book about cooking. Her features and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Literary Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Saturday Paper among other publications. In 2019 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant services to literature, and was named one of the Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence.
Her latest project is a new podcast, The Writer's Room with Charlotte Wood, in which she interviews authors, critics and other artists about the creative process.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 628 reviews
October 2, 2024
Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker prize, after being the first Australian author since 2016 to make it on the longlist! 🇦🇺
Grief and how it can be permanent seems a key theme in the book and nearly all the characters. A woman enters a nunnery, in more ways than one, during Covid-19 in Australia
Being here feels somehow like childhood, the hours are so long and there is so much waiting, staring into space. Absolutely nothing is asked of me, nothing expected.
I have a few friends who swear with meditation retreats, and the main character of Stone Yard Devotional takes the concept even further. A nunnery seems a reprieve for a middle aged woman after a failing marriage and coming to terms with dead parents. Also a wider theme of doing no harm by taking oneself out of the capitalist world, versus a husband who is fighting climate change and still has hope, in the terms of the main character, is interesting.
There is a dead sister found in Bangkok, a mice infestation due to climate change, a bullied girl from the past turned superstar nun (whatever that means, Charlotte Wood opens up a whole new world in a sense to me), another classmate working as handyman, financial destitution at the monastery: the book certainly doesn’t get dull or overly meditative.
Being in an environment with just 8 nuns doesn't help the main character get the hang of praying, maybe mirrored in the events she endures, with especially the mice getting increasingly biblical in terms of plague, chewing at literally everything including their own deceased and pigeons.
Meanwhile we have a lot of flashbacks to the growing up of the narrator and her relationship with her mother. In the end there is both catharsis from dead parents and from bullying in the past to be found. Overall this was for me a 3.5 star read that I managed to devour in a day and enjoyed it more than the cover text made me think initially!
Quotes:
I murmur some generic sound
Most of us, lets face it, knew our place in the pecking order
If you don’t life the live your meant for it makes you ill
And I don’t know what my duty to that knowledge is, except to hold it.
Forgiveness is far from easy, not being judgemental in the world
2024 Booker prize personal ranking, shortlisted books in bold:
1. Held (4.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2. Playground (4.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
3. James (4*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
4. Wandering Stars (4*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
5. Headshot (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
6. The Safekeep (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
7. My Friends (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
8. Stone Yard Devotional (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
9. This Strange and Eventful History (3*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
10. Creation Lake (3*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
11. Enlightenment (3*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
12. Orbital (2.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
13. Wild Houses (2.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Grief and how it can be permanent seems a key theme in the book and nearly all the characters. A woman enters a nunnery, in more ways than one, during Covid-19 in Australia
Being here feels somehow like childhood, the hours are so long and there is so much waiting, staring into space. Absolutely nothing is asked of me, nothing expected.
I have a few friends who swear with meditation retreats, and the main character of Stone Yard Devotional takes the concept even further. A nunnery seems a reprieve for a middle aged woman after a failing marriage and coming to terms with dead parents. Also a wider theme of doing no harm by taking oneself out of the capitalist world, versus a husband who is fighting climate change and still has hope, in the terms of the main character, is interesting.
There is a dead sister found in Bangkok, a mice infestation due to climate change, a bullied girl from the past turned superstar nun (whatever that means, Charlotte Wood opens up a whole new world in a sense to me), another classmate working as handyman, financial destitution at the monastery: the book certainly doesn’t get dull or overly meditative.
Being in an environment with just 8 nuns doesn't help the main character get the hang of praying, maybe mirrored in the events she endures, with especially the mice getting increasingly biblical in terms of plague, chewing at literally everything including their own deceased and pigeons.
Meanwhile we have a lot of flashbacks to the growing up of the narrator and her relationship with her mother. In the end there is both catharsis from dead parents and from bullying in the past to be found. Overall this was for me a 3.5 star read that I managed to devour in a day and enjoyed it more than the cover text made me think initially!
Quotes:
I murmur some generic sound
Most of us, lets face it, knew our place in the pecking order
If you don’t life the live your meant for it makes you ill
And I don’t know what my duty to that knowledge is, except to hold it.
Forgiveness is far from easy, not being judgemental in the world
2024 Booker prize personal ranking, shortlisted books in bold:
1. Held (4.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2. Playground (4.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
3. James (4*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
4. Wandering Stars (4*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
5. Headshot (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
6. The Safekeep (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
7. My Friends (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
8. Stone Yard Devotional (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
9. This Strange and Eventful History (3*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
10. Creation Lake (3*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
11. Enlightenment (3*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
12. Orbital (2.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
13. Wild Houses (2.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
December 11, 2023
Another navel-gazer, another endless musing best suited to a private journal or writing retreat. I long for crackling, sharp-edged writing that captivates and entertains instead of endless show-don’t-tell tactics and techniques.
August 31, 2023
'Nobody knows the subterranean lives of families'.
Lying amid the stark, desolate surroundings of Monaro, is a place of quiet stillness: a cloistered community of nuns. Drawn to this austere, tranquility, so near to the town of her childhood, is a woman who has deliberately decided to delete her previous city life: her husband, friends, and job, 'I had a need, an animal need, to find a place I had never been but which was still, in some undeniable way, my home'. Being so near her old childhood home increasingly challenges her memories and beliefs. They erupt and multiply as drastically as the plague of mice invading their home and town, 'The mouse plague is infecting everything now: all sense of smell, of course, but even sound, even memory'.
'Stone Yard Devotional', is a contemplative story related in a series of short paragraphs, filled with reflection and wondering. The reader is never properly introduced to the main character, her name is never given and her past is only revealed in glimpses throughout. There really is no beginning and there is no end. However, the anonymity of the MC allows the reader to read the thoughts as their own. For me, it was the musing that made this story compelling.
I have never read any of Charlotte Wood's previous books, but I did enjoy the desolation, the reflections, and the ruminations in this book. Overall, a compelling, contemporary book.
Lying amid the stark, desolate surroundings of Monaro, is a place of quiet stillness: a cloistered community of nuns. Drawn to this austere, tranquility, so near to the town of her childhood, is a woman who has deliberately decided to delete her previous city life: her husband, friends, and job, 'I had a need, an animal need, to find a place I had never been but which was still, in some undeniable way, my home'. Being so near her old childhood home increasingly challenges her memories and beliefs. They erupt and multiply as drastically as the plague of mice invading their home and town, 'The mouse plague is infecting everything now: all sense of smell, of course, but even sound, even memory'.
'Stone Yard Devotional', is a contemplative story related in a series of short paragraphs, filled with reflection and wondering. The reader is never properly introduced to the main character, her name is never given and her past is only revealed in glimpses throughout. There really is no beginning and there is no end. However, the anonymity of the MC allows the reader to read the thoughts as their own. For me, it was the musing that made this story compelling.
I have never read any of Charlotte Wood's previous books, but I did enjoy the desolation, the reflections, and the ruminations in this book. Overall, a compelling, contemporary book.
September 2, 2024
Five Brilliant stars for Charlotte Wood and although I haven't yet read the other Booker nominees, I would love this one to win. She writes about many subjects that are close to my range of interests: the mother who composts everything - I have one of those.
My mother said that anything that had once been alive should go back into the soil. Food scraps went into the compost, of course, including meat and bones, despite the general advice against this. Paper, torn into strips to allow air and microbes to move freely through. She would cut old pure cotton or silk or woollen clothes into small shreds and compost them too. Fish bones and flesh. Linen tea towels. She reluctantly left out larger pieces of wood, but longed for a woodchipper. She left cane furniture to rot and then buried it. She quoted a Buckingham Palace gardener she had once seen on television, who added leather boots to his compost bin. All that was needed was time, and nature.
Anything that had lived could make itself useful, become nourishment in death, my mother said.
I never knew anyone else who had her reverence for the earth itself.
From my earliest memories I remember my mother saving scraps for the compost- I know she put in bones and materials, paper and cardboard. From my earliest years I've know that you can't have too many "greens" or your compost will stink.
Back to Charlotte Wood - Yes, she reminds me quite a bit of Alice Munro, and her stories set in those isolated prairie towns. Munro's townsfolk are similar to the ones described in our narrator's home-town near the Monaro plains of South West Australia. Wood supplies hardly any description of this isolated, dry land and again I think this is a decision to avoid any type of romanticism - although I do love Gretel Erhlich's work - a writer who is able to viscerally put the high plains of Montana and Wyoming onto paper. I think Wood eschews description in order to focus exclusively on how her humans interact with the natural world. At the abbey there is an ugly, bewildering, destructive plague of mice. Although I might note here that her squeamish levels are quite low. As a cat and dog owner I've unfortunately had to deal with rather a large number of corpses. Out in the wilds of Portugal my two dogs have caught and broken the necks of several mongoose. The screams of an animal fighting for its life are not something you forget quickly - or even when you view its mangled body, can you soothe yourself that it was killed quickly. I would guess that Wood has lived primarily in a city.
On the other-hand her analyses of the human necessity for Forgiveness are some of the best I've ever read; both in a formal capacity, as revealed by the sisters, members of the Catholic faith, with whom our narrator lives. She recounts incidents from her own life in a less formal manner. There is an unpleasant incidence of bullying in school, and another where she fails to acknowledge some Vietnamese refugees, whom she had met earlier. The narrator's stories remind us that to forgive or not is part of everyone's life and that it can become a difficult question when we consider people who have harmed us. Wood presents some fairly basic concepts but then develops this theme of forgiveness in many more complex scenarios; which certainly caused me to reflect on my own life and the relationships I have.
I've spent some considerable time thinking about a particular person, and I've long since come to the conclusion that although I understand his behaviour I'm not sure whether I can ever forgive his refusal to have any interaction with me. There are consequences for decisions made. Wood relates the story of a woman who is dying; the narrator's friend, Beth has neither the energy or time to give to a person from her past. This person has embarked on a 12-step program, and wants to connect with her. Our narrator approved and understood her friend's decision, but sometimes Wood underestimates, I think the life-experience and knowledge of some of her readers.
On the whole, I forgive her because of her insights into how people either deal or don't deal with the subject of death; how they grieve over loved ones. There are several sections where the narrator recounts the death of her mother; she talks at some length about the necessity of being practical, and of being present with people who are dying. These sections Wood handles with supreme clarity and sense. She writes with many declarative sentences, in a simple style and thus she asks us to consider our own most repressed fears.
Only recently, for example have I acknowledged how much I hate to stay in any person's home other than my own - and I recognise this is due to some unpleasant experiences earlier in my life. We bury those feelings of fear. This is the common way of dealing with so much that is out of our control.
Wood clarifies that most people hide the truth; the essential truth about themselves from themselves. In the character of Helen Parry she has created a rare person who is able to acknowledge, confront, and then forgive the harm that has been done to her. The narrator and the character of Helen Parry are possibly two parts of the same person - our author - I suspect, because these two characters have been created with such authenticity.
Loved it, loved it, loved it. I've ordered The Weekend, which I understand is something quite different from Stone Yard Devotional, but I'm happy to read anything by this wonderful writer. She reminds me of Helen Garner, who is another favourite of mine.
The Spare Room - Helen Garner - she writes about living and dying with cancer.
The Solace of Open Spaces Gretel Ehrlich - evocative descriptions of wild places.
The Progress of Love - Alice Munro - families, small towns.
My mother said that anything that had once been alive should go back into the soil. Food scraps went into the compost, of course, including meat and bones, despite the general advice against this. Paper, torn into strips to allow air and microbes to move freely through. She would cut old pure cotton or silk or woollen clothes into small shreds and compost them too. Fish bones and flesh. Linen tea towels. She reluctantly left out larger pieces of wood, but longed for a woodchipper. She left cane furniture to rot and then buried it. She quoted a Buckingham Palace gardener she had once seen on television, who added leather boots to his compost bin. All that was needed was time, and nature.
Anything that had lived could make itself useful, become nourishment in death, my mother said.
I never knew anyone else who had her reverence for the earth itself.
From my earliest memories I remember my mother saving scraps for the compost- I know she put in bones and materials, paper and cardboard. From my earliest years I've know that you can't have too many "greens" or your compost will stink.
Back to Charlotte Wood - Yes, she reminds me quite a bit of Alice Munro, and her stories set in those isolated prairie towns. Munro's townsfolk are similar to the ones described in our narrator's home-town near the Monaro plains of South West Australia. Wood supplies hardly any description of this isolated, dry land and again I think this is a decision to avoid any type of romanticism - although I do love Gretel Erhlich's work - a writer who is able to viscerally put the high plains of Montana and Wyoming onto paper. I think Wood eschews description in order to focus exclusively on how her humans interact with the natural world. At the abbey there is an ugly, bewildering, destructive plague of mice. Although I might note here that her squeamish levels are quite low. As a cat and dog owner I've unfortunately had to deal with rather a large number of corpses. Out in the wilds of Portugal my two dogs have caught and broken the necks of several mongoose. The screams of an animal fighting for its life are not something you forget quickly - or even when you view its mangled body, can you soothe yourself that it was killed quickly. I would guess that Wood has lived primarily in a city.
On the other-hand her analyses of the human necessity for Forgiveness are some of the best I've ever read; both in a formal capacity, as revealed by the sisters, members of the Catholic faith, with whom our narrator lives. She recounts incidents from her own life in a less formal manner. There is an unpleasant incidence of bullying in school, and another where she fails to acknowledge some Vietnamese refugees, whom she had met earlier. The narrator's stories remind us that to forgive or not is part of everyone's life and that it can become a difficult question when we consider people who have harmed us. Wood presents some fairly basic concepts but then develops this theme of forgiveness in many more complex scenarios; which certainly caused me to reflect on my own life and the relationships I have.
I've spent some considerable time thinking about a particular person, and I've long since come to the conclusion that although I understand his behaviour I'm not sure whether I can ever forgive his refusal to have any interaction with me. There are consequences for decisions made. Wood relates the story of a woman who is dying; the narrator's friend, Beth has neither the energy or time to give to a person from her past. This person has embarked on a 12-step program, and wants to connect with her. Our narrator approved and understood her friend's decision, but sometimes Wood underestimates, I think the life-experience and knowledge of some of her readers.
On the whole, I forgive her because of her insights into how people either deal or don't deal with the subject of death; how they grieve over loved ones. There are several sections where the narrator recounts the death of her mother; she talks at some length about the necessity of being practical, and of being present with people who are dying. These sections Wood handles with supreme clarity and sense. She writes with many declarative sentences, in a simple style and thus she asks us to consider our own most repressed fears.
Only recently, for example have I acknowledged how much I hate to stay in any person's home other than my own - and I recognise this is due to some unpleasant experiences earlier in my life. We bury those feelings of fear. This is the common way of dealing with so much that is out of our control.
Wood clarifies that most people hide the truth; the essential truth about themselves from themselves. In the character of Helen Parry she has created a rare person who is able to acknowledge, confront, and then forgive the harm that has been done to her. The narrator and the character of Helen Parry are possibly two parts of the same person - our author - I suspect, because these two characters have been created with such authenticity.
Loved it, loved it, loved it. I've ordered The Weekend, which I understand is something quite different from Stone Yard Devotional, but I'm happy to read anything by this wonderful writer. She reminds me of Helen Garner, who is another favourite of mine.
The Spare Room - Helen Garner - she writes about living and dying with cancer.
The Solace of Open Spaces Gretel Ehrlich - evocative descriptions of wild places.
The Progress of Love - Alice Munro - families, small towns.
September 2, 2024
This is a quiet, contemplative novel about an unnamed woman who, following her divorce, the death of her mother, and quitting her job with an endangered species organization - and also at the beginning of the Covid shutdown - decides to join a community of sequestered nuns in a remote area of her native Australia. Not exactly what one would expect to contain riveting, fast-paced thrills - and it doesn't.
But nevertheless, I was quite taken with Wood's narrator and story - and if I could have done with a few less descriptions of the encroaching mouse plague (a real occurrence every few years in those parts), and perhaps a bit more differentiation in the subsidiary nun characters, I was no less taken with what there is here. Wood's prose is also serviceable, without being overly ornate or fussy.
And the final sections about forgiveness and - having lost my own mother recently - the details of her mother's final days, really hit home with me. There's been a bit of a push back about its inclusion on the Booker longlist - primarily, I suspect, because people assume it took the place of the wrongfully neglected Praiseworthy - but it certainly deserves its spot more than a few others on the list (cough, cough ... Headshot ... cough ... Orbital ... cough). In fact, I thought it was much better at delineating its profundities than the rather trite and obvious 'wonders' of the later book.
But nevertheless, I was quite taken with Wood's narrator and story - and if I could have done with a few less descriptions of the encroaching mouse plague (a real occurrence every few years in those parts), and perhaps a bit more differentiation in the subsidiary nun characters, I was no less taken with what there is here. Wood's prose is also serviceable, without being overly ornate or fussy.
And the final sections about forgiveness and - having lost my own mother recently - the details of her mother's final days, really hit home with me. There's been a bit of a push back about its inclusion on the Booker longlist - primarily, I suspect, because people assume it took the place of the wrongfully neglected Praiseworthy - but it certainly deserves its spot more than a few others on the list (cough, cough ... Headshot ... cough ... Orbital ... cough). In fact, I thought it was much better at delineating its profundities than the rather trite and obvious 'wonders' of the later book.
April 22, 2024
This has the feel of fragmentary autofiction, as if Sigrid Nunez decided to rewrite Iris Murdoch’s The Bell and set it in contemporary Australia. The unnamed narrator has given up on her marriage and on wildlife conservation, once her profession. Despite not being particularly religious, this resigned ex-environmentalist ends up living in a remote convent when what started as a five-day retreat turned permanent. Something about the isolation and the community’s regimented, ritualistic activity is comforting to her, and she’s documenting it all in a diary. It’s a time of plague: not just Covid, but also a mouse infestation worse than you’ve ever encountered (if you have musophobia, you will NOT want to read this). The other two complications in an otherwise low-key plot are the return of the remains of a murdered nun, and a visit from someone the narrator remembers from high school, an uncomfortable reminder that she participated in bullying instead of having compassion on someone less privileged.
It’s hard to believe that this is by the same author as The Weekend, which despite its focus on older age was so witty. By contrast, Stone Yard Devotional offers no such consolations. Especially with the narrator's ongoing guilt and grief over her parents, even though they have been gone for 30 years, death is presented as inexorable. And while temporary conflicts do resolve themselves towards the close, an overall sense of despair lingers. And yet the diary feels so true to life, from the randomness of the incidents she relates from her girlhood to the raw honesty of her musings on loss and religion, that I was rapt. It leaves you uneasy; it leaves a mark.
Some favourite lines:
“Being here feels somehow like childhood; the hours are so long and there is so much waiting, staring into space. Absolutely nothing is asked of me, nothing expected.”
“Nobody will read this but me. Even so, I imagine there are things I’m leaving out.”
“When I think about the phases of my life, it is as a series of rooms behind me, each with a door to a previous room left open, behind which is another room, and another and another. The rooms are not quite empty, not exactly dark, but they are shadowy, with indistinct shapes, and I don’t like to think about them much.”
“I have sometimes thought it wrong of me to be so preoccupied with my mother and not my father.”
“Once more I wish I was able to be a wiser daughter to her when she was still alive.”
It’s hard to believe that this is by the same author as The Weekend, which despite its focus on older age was so witty. By contrast, Stone Yard Devotional offers no such consolations. Especially with the narrator's ongoing guilt and grief over her parents, even though they have been gone for 30 years, death is presented as inexorable. And while temporary conflicts do resolve themselves towards the close, an overall sense of despair lingers. And yet the diary feels so true to life, from the randomness of the incidents she relates from her girlhood to the raw honesty of her musings on loss and religion, that I was rapt. It leaves you uneasy; it leaves a mark.
Some favourite lines:
“Being here feels somehow like childhood; the hours are so long and there is so much waiting, staring into space. Absolutely nothing is asked of me, nothing expected.”
“Nobody will read this but me. Even so, I imagine there are things I’m leaving out.”
“When I think about the phases of my life, it is as a series of rooms behind me, each with a door to a previous room left open, behind which is another room, and another and another. The rooms are not quite empty, not exactly dark, but they are shadowy, with indistinct shapes, and I don’t like to think about them much.”
“I have sometimes thought it wrong of me to be so preoccupied with my mother and not my father.”
“Once more I wish I was able to be a wiser daughter to her when she was still alive.”
August 2, 2024
Reader, I wanted to love it more than I did. Wood is an interesting author who is able to write compellingly obscure stories. However, the deeply reflective nature of this one didn’t work with the lack of narrative drive for me. There are some really interesting ideas here, about eschewing capitalism and the modern world for isolated introspection, and the role of ritual in helping us cope with, and/or avoid global and personal issues. I found moments of the consideration of these ideas interesting but this didn’t work for me as a whole.
August 21, 2024
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024
I'm glad I went back to the audiobook and put aside my apprehension that this would be a s0-called "spiritual" novel. The Booker Prize longlisting of this short novel convinced me I should give it another chance.
A middle-aged, childless woman leaves her job, interests, city life, her dying marriage, and moves close to where she grew up, in a small town. She somehow manages to move into a small Catholic monastery, inhabited by nuns. Interestingly enough, the narrator is not religious.
The life is simple, preoccupied with survival, domesticity, and rituals. There's a horrendous mouse plague that lasts years (based on real-life events). Also, there is a famous nun coming to live at the monastery.
Wood weaved seamlessly between the daily grind and the past, with little snippets of moments and events, showing how memory is so strange, certain seemingly small things we remember for decades. The back-and-forth examines life, sorrow, guilt, grief.
The marriage and the relationships with men are brushed over, they're not analysed in great detail, which I guess is fair enough, I appreciate the author's choice of not centrering men in the character's life.
This is a quiet, navel-gazing kind of novel that will appeal to some more than others. My appreciation of this novel was greatly enhaced by Ailsa Piper's beautiful narration.
I'm glad I went back to the audiobook and put aside my apprehension that this would be a s0-called "spiritual" novel. The Booker Prize longlisting of this short novel convinced me I should give it another chance.
A middle-aged, childless woman leaves her job, interests, city life, her dying marriage, and moves close to where she grew up, in a small town. She somehow manages to move into a small Catholic monastery, inhabited by nuns. Interestingly enough, the narrator is not religious.
The life is simple, preoccupied with survival, domesticity, and rituals. There's a horrendous mouse plague that lasts years (based on real-life events). Also, there is a famous nun coming to live at the monastery.
Wood weaved seamlessly between the daily grind and the past, with little snippets of moments and events, showing how memory is so strange, certain seemingly small things we remember for decades. The back-and-forth examines life, sorrow, guilt, grief.
The marriage and the relationships with men are brushed over, they're not analysed in great detail, which I guess is fair enough, I appreciate the author's choice of not centrering men in the character's life.
This is a quiet, navel-gazing kind of novel that will appeal to some more than others. My appreciation of this novel was greatly enhaced by Ailsa Piper's beautiful narration.
Read
October 27, 2023The impulse to disengage from modern life and capitalism is one I relate to deeply. I would choose a cabin in the woods over a convent overrun by a mouse plague but each to their own. In spare prose, reminiscent of Sigrid Nunez, Wood strips back what a life can be. She’s asking questions about what we humans owe each other and how we might make amends when we fail each other. These are good questions to be asking.
December 22, 2023
Weder glaubt sie an Gott, noch betet sie gerne, und doch verschlägt es die Ich-Erzählerin in "Tage mit mir" von Charlotte Wood, aus dem australischen Englisch übersetzt von Michaela Grabinger, in ein Kloster in den Monaro Plains. Zunächst sollte es nur ein kurzer Aufenthalt werden, ein Abschalten vom Alltag, eine Ruhe genießen, die sonst unmöglich scheint. Dann kommt sie immer wieder - und bleibt letztlich, auf unbestimmte Zeit. Im Kloster wird sie mit Situationen konfrontiert, die sie aus ihrem hektischen Stadt-Alltag nicht kennt: Einer Mäuseplage, der Rückführung von Gebeinen einer Ordensschwester aus dem Ausland in Zeiten der Pandemie, dem Zusammentreffen mit einer früheren Schulkameradin. Dabei kreisen die Gedanken der Protagonistin immer wieder um den Tod ihrer Eltern, ihre Kindheit und Jugend und den Zustand unserer Welt. Die täglichen Rituale im Kloster ermöglichen ihr einen Rahmen, eine Stabilität, um mit ihren persönlichen Verlusten und Ängsten umzugehen.
Der Gedanke, einer Ungläubigen literarisch in ein Kloster zu folgen, hat mich sehr gereizt. Zunächst habe ich mich auch gerne hineinziehen lassen in Charlotte Woods ruhigen, tagebuchartigen Stil in ihrem neuen Roman, gerade die erste Zeit der Ich-Erzählerin im Kloster, ihre Bestandsaufnahme der Umgebung, Menschen und Gebräuche, habe ich als spannend empfunden. Leider wurde mir das Buch mit der Zeit aber zu ziellos, ich habe nicht ganz verstanden, wo die Autorin mit den Lesenden hin möchte. Auch über die Gründe für den Rückzug der Erzählerin ins Kloster werden die Lesenden weitestgehend im Dunkeln gelassen, Vieles wird nur angedeutet. Dass nicht viel in diesem Roman passiert, kann sicherlich entschleunigend wirken, sich einfach mit der Protagonistin durch die Tage treiben zu lassen - für mich hat das die Lektüre aber recht fad gemacht, ich habe mich stellenweise sehr gelangweilt. Das liegt oft auch an den Umständen, unter denen man ein Buch liest, für mich war es wohl gerade in Zeiten von Weihnachtstrubel und Alltagsstress nicht der richtige Roman. Passend zur Weihnachtszeit möchte ich aber sehr gerne Charlotte Woods Roman "Ein Wochenende" empfehlen, der mir vor ein paar Jahren wirklich gut gefallen hat und am Weihnachtswochenende spielt, allerdings in einem Strandhaus im Warmen. Und wer Lust auf einen Kloster-Roman hat, dem würde ich eher "Matrix" von Lauren Groff in die Hand drücken.
Der Gedanke, einer Ungläubigen literarisch in ein Kloster zu folgen, hat mich sehr gereizt. Zunächst habe ich mich auch gerne hineinziehen lassen in Charlotte Woods ruhigen, tagebuchartigen Stil in ihrem neuen Roman, gerade die erste Zeit der Ich-Erzählerin im Kloster, ihre Bestandsaufnahme der Umgebung, Menschen und Gebräuche, habe ich als spannend empfunden. Leider wurde mir das Buch mit der Zeit aber zu ziellos, ich habe nicht ganz verstanden, wo die Autorin mit den Lesenden hin möchte. Auch über die Gründe für den Rückzug der Erzählerin ins Kloster werden die Lesenden weitestgehend im Dunkeln gelassen, Vieles wird nur angedeutet. Dass nicht viel in diesem Roman passiert, kann sicherlich entschleunigend wirken, sich einfach mit der Protagonistin durch die Tage treiben zu lassen - für mich hat das die Lektüre aber recht fad gemacht, ich habe mich stellenweise sehr gelangweilt. Das liegt oft auch an den Umständen, unter denen man ein Buch liest, für mich war es wohl gerade in Zeiten von Weihnachtstrubel und Alltagsstress nicht der richtige Roman. Passend zur Weihnachtszeit möchte ich aber sehr gerne Charlotte Woods Roman "Ein Wochenende" empfehlen, der mir vor ein paar Jahren wirklich gut gefallen hat und am Weihnachtswochenende spielt, allerdings in einem Strandhaus im Warmen. Und wer Lust auf einen Kloster-Roman hat, dem würde ich eher "Matrix" von Lauren Groff in die Hand drücken.
January 7, 2024
Stone Yard Devotional is a gentle, deeply contemplative novel but it’s not about gentle things. It’s a chronicle of slights and the wrongs we do other people, and asks how do we atone and rectify our wrongdoings.
The story takes the form of a diary written by an unnamed woman on a “retreat” — from her marriage, from her city life working for a threatened species charity, from the noise, clutter and busyness of 21st-century living.
She’s staying in the guest “cabin” attached to a cloistered religious community. The small community of nuns, together with two or three other guests, live on the plains of Monaro, in rural NSW, where the narrator grew up.
The rhythms and rituals of this way of life provide structure to her days, as well as a kind of comfort. The outside world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, but here the seclusion acts as a safe “bubble”.
There’s no real plot; the story simply charts the narrator’s experience living this new way of life, where the most stressful thing is battling a mouse plague (warning: some of the scenes involving mice are gruesome) and trying to wean the nuns off prepackaged foods.
Interestingly, she hasn’t been called to the monastery by religion — she’s an avowed atheist — but by a need to escape the trappings of modern life and “to find a place I had never been but which was still, in some undeniable way, my home”. Scratch deeper and that need is really to pay penance for past wrongs by giving something back, to serve others in a way that her late mother served others.
This is a quiet, introspective novel. It feels like a memoir given all the anecdotes and recollections of childhood guilt and parental influences, coupled with diary entries that come right out of the Helen Garner school of observational writing. I was hypnotised by the meditative prose and the clear-eyed self-analysis that pulls no punches.
For a more detailed review, please visit my blog.
The story takes the form of a diary written by an unnamed woman on a “retreat” — from her marriage, from her city life working for a threatened species charity, from the noise, clutter and busyness of 21st-century living.
She’s staying in the guest “cabin” attached to a cloistered religious community. The small community of nuns, together with two or three other guests, live on the plains of Monaro, in rural NSW, where the narrator grew up.
The rhythms and rituals of this way of life provide structure to her days, as well as a kind of comfort. The outside world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, but here the seclusion acts as a safe “bubble”.
There’s no real plot; the story simply charts the narrator’s experience living this new way of life, where the most stressful thing is battling a mouse plague (warning: some of the scenes involving mice are gruesome) and trying to wean the nuns off prepackaged foods.
Interestingly, she hasn’t been called to the monastery by religion — she’s an avowed atheist — but by a need to escape the trappings of modern life and “to find a place I had never been but which was still, in some undeniable way, my home”. Scratch deeper and that need is really to pay penance for past wrongs by giving something back, to serve others in a way that her late mother served others.
This is a quiet, introspective novel. It feels like a memoir given all the anecdotes and recollections of childhood guilt and parental influences, coupled with diary entries that come right out of the Helen Garner school of observational writing. I was hypnotised by the meditative prose and the clear-eyed self-analysis that pulls no punches.
For a more detailed review, please visit my blog.
September 17, 2024
(4.5) RTC -- beautifully balanced prose style perfectly synthesized with subject. Plus: is it fair to say that Charlotte Wood has been a little but underserved marketing-wise? I've been led to believe she writes Costa-style stuff and that's just not the case.
October 2, 2024
Watch out for this one. If there is one book that can take this year's Booker from Percival Everett's James, this is the one.
September 15, 2024
(Book 4 of my Journey through the booker prize longlist )
4.75 ⭐️
When I saw that the booker prize longlist came out I decided to challenge myself to read as much as I can before the shortlist was decided, I find it so exciting to be able to try and predict the winner, however; since there is 13 books on the longlist I know I will not be able to get through them all & I had to prioritise the books I think sound the most intriguing… along comes an Australian book Stone Yard Devotional
Stone Yard Devotional was BRILLIANT. A story about a woman as she turns her back on her marriage and her life in Sydney and retreats to her hometown, where she resides with a group of catholic nuns. During the peak of covid she navigates her days introspectively and routinely. Doing chores and blending into the nuns daily structure, so much so she starts to just slowly fade and accept her new life, when suddenly a mouse plague infests the town.
I can’t begin to tell you how incredibly captivated I was at this novel. The way it was written was so beautiful, with overall themes being grief and isolation. Following this main character as she just goes about her day to day duties, having to fight off the mice that plague her town, the exhaustion and dread of hearing them in the walls, never leaving. Seeing faces from her childhood and having to deal with old wounds and memories. Grappling with the grief of her parent’s death and the abandonment of her marriage, incredible! I finished this in 2 days.
There isn’t a huge amount of plot, which seems to be the case with the past few books that I’ve read in the Booker prize longlist, such as Headshot & Orbital. Written like a diary, with an unnamed main character, I felt still incredibly connected and involved in this story. A great representation of Australian writing, from the first page until the end I loved it.
4.75 ⭐️
When I saw that the booker prize longlist came out I decided to challenge myself to read as much as I can before the shortlist was decided, I find it so exciting to be able to try and predict the winner, however; since there is 13 books on the longlist I know I will not be able to get through them all & I had to prioritise the books I think sound the most intriguing… along comes an Australian book Stone Yard Devotional
“To find my parents, I had to recall the cold, unsheltered feeling I had - physically, I mean - at each of their funerals.
There had been the sensation of too much space around me there, at the place where my father, then later my mother, were sent into their adjacent shafts of opened earth. (It seemed callous to me back then to lower a person into a hole in the ground using ropes and cords instead of arms)”
Stone Yard Devotional was BRILLIANT. A story about a woman as she turns her back on her marriage and her life in Sydney and retreats to her hometown, where she resides with a group of catholic nuns. During the peak of covid she navigates her days introspectively and routinely. Doing chores and blending into the nuns daily structure, so much so she starts to just slowly fade and accept her new life, when suddenly a mouse plague infests the town.
I can’t begin to tell you how incredibly captivated I was at this novel. The way it was written was so beautiful, with overall themes being grief and isolation. Following this main character as she just goes about her day to day duties, having to fight off the mice that plague her town, the exhaustion and dread of hearing them in the walls, never leaving. Seeing faces from her childhood and having to deal with old wounds and memories. Grappling with the grief of her parent’s death and the abandonment of her marriage, incredible! I finished this in 2 days.
There isn’t a huge amount of plot, which seems to be the case with the past few books that I’ve read in the Booker prize longlist, such as Headshot & Orbital. Written like a diary, with an unnamed main character, I felt still incredibly connected and involved in this story. A great representation of Australian writing, from the first page until the end I loved it.
August 15, 2024
Review to come, but for now:
This started off very strong; middle was muddled; end section was great. Wish the whole book was like Part 1 and 3. But anyway, here’s a great quote for now:
“But still, it has surprised me, over the years, to discover how many people find the idea of habitual kindness to be somehow suspect: a mask or a lie.”
This started off very strong; middle was muddled; end section was great. Wish the whole book was like Part 1 and 3. But anyway, here’s a great quote for now:
“But still, it has surprised me, over the years, to discover how many people find the idea of habitual kindness to be somehow suspect: a mask or a lie.”
November 3, 2023
I could be wrong, but I think Stone Yard Devotional will test the loyalty of some of Charlotte Wood's more recent fans. I found it compulsive reading, and read on through the night, but though the preoccupation with human frailty in Stone Yard Devotional is there in her earlier work too, this novel is a departure from Wood's most recent fiction. There are no angry strident feminists as in
The Natural Way of Things
(2015), and her central character has deliberately jettisoned the succour of female friendship among older women that we saw tested in
The Weekend
(2019). Stone Yard Devotional (2023) is about a middle-aged woman alone and struggling with existential questions about goodness, forgiveness, hope and despair.
Indeed, this meditation on the life that's been lived reads more like an extended examination of conscience than anything else.
Catholics define examination of conscience as a process...
And although the central, unnamed narrator asserts her atheism from time to time, and there's certainly no mention of the Catholic ritual of confession in the novel, the preoccupation with wrongs done to others and the regrets she feels about her sins and failings seem quasi-religious to me.
Of course, that's not to say that non-believers don't engage in similar kinds of self-reflection. Most religious rites derive from rituals and ceremonies that humans do anyway.
This woman takes time out from her failed marriage and her busy life as a some kind of administrator for environmental concerns, to spend a week in solitude in a religious community on the Monaro. This small community of nuns ekes out an income by taking in guests who need a temporary escape to a life of simplicity, routine and peace. This is no 'wellness centre' with gourmet healthy meals, massage and luxury accommodation. What appeals to her is the solitude, the silence and the opportunity to reflect on her life without distraction. She decides to make this place her refuge and she joins the community. Not as a nun, but as a secular conventual oblate i.e. a committed volunteer in the service of the community, abiding by its rules but not necessarily sharing its religious beliefs.
The reader is given little or nothing in the way of a back story. We soon learn that she is grieving the death of her mother from some time ago, but we don't know why her relationship with Alex has failed, and we assume there are no children. We know very little about her friends except that they are hurt by her abandonment. The activist community from which she has summarily withdrawn is bereft as well. They do not understand, and she makes no attempt to explain, merely unsubscribing from everything.
Despite this disconnection from people and causes that she had obviously held dear, her retreat to a spare, monastic life can still be disturbed.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/11/03/s...
Indeed, this meditation on the life that's been lived reads more like an extended examination of conscience than anything else.
Catholics define examination of conscience as a process...
...to help call to mind our sins and failings during a period of quiet reflection before approaching the Priest in Confession. (Bulldog Catholic, viewed 3/11/23)
And although the central, unnamed narrator asserts her atheism from time to time, and there's certainly no mention of the Catholic ritual of confession in the novel, the preoccupation with wrongs done to others and the regrets she feels about her sins and failings seem quasi-religious to me.
Of course, that's not to say that non-believers don't engage in similar kinds of self-reflection. Most religious rites derive from rituals and ceremonies that humans do anyway.
This woman takes time out from her failed marriage and her busy life as a some kind of administrator for environmental concerns, to spend a week in solitude in a religious community on the Monaro. This small community of nuns ekes out an income by taking in guests who need a temporary escape to a life of simplicity, routine and peace. This is no 'wellness centre' with gourmet healthy meals, massage and luxury accommodation. What appeals to her is the solitude, the silence and the opportunity to reflect on her life without distraction. She decides to make this place her refuge and she joins the community. Not as a nun, but as a secular conventual oblate i.e. a committed volunteer in the service of the community, abiding by its rules but not necessarily sharing its religious beliefs.
The reader is given little or nothing in the way of a back story. We soon learn that she is grieving the death of her mother from some time ago, but we don't know why her relationship with Alex has failed, and we assume there are no children. We know very little about her friends except that they are hurt by her abandonment. The activist community from which she has summarily withdrawn is bereft as well. They do not understand, and she makes no attempt to explain, merely unsubscribing from everything.
The last thing I did on email before coming here for good was scroll and click. Threatened Species Rescue Centre: unsubscribe. Nature Conservation Council: unsubscribe. Rainforest Alliance: unsubscribe. Human Rights Watch: unsubscribe. Indigenous Literacy Foundation: unsubscribe. National Justice Project, Pay the Rent, Foodbank, Wilderness Society. Ethical Investments. Amnesty International, Red Cross, Climate Act Now, National Justice Project[sic], Aboriginal Legal Service, Bob Brown Foundation. Extinction Rebellion: unsubscribe. Change.org: unsubscribe. Fred Hollows Foundation. Greenpeace, Green Living Australia, Action Network, BirdLife Australia, Daintree Buyback. Chuffed.org. GoFundMe. Helen Parry Legal defence Fund: unsubscribe. (p.152)
Despite this disconnection from people and causes that she had obviously held dear, her retreat to a spare, monastic life can still be disturbed.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/11/03/s...
October 22, 2023
A core impacting novel. When I finished Stone Yard Devotional, I had many thoughts and ideas shooting off inside my mind. In fact my mind felt like it was caught in the middle of old west gun battle. Firstly, I don't know if I dreamt the setting for Stone Yard Devotional or had long conversations with my mum years ago, about visiting a NSW rural convent to have an immersive experience. For many years I've sprouted to friends and family, I'm the atheist nun. I've my reasons, beyond a fascination with ritual, sacrifice, and austere living.
The question at the heart of Stone Yard Devotional is forgiveness, how does forgiveness work? Especially self forgiveness? A daughter - mother relationship that comes into its own, in analysis, analysis that leans into the stories that happen around us, and with us. The observations that are often only made many years later. Understanding that's only possible (perhaps) when time has past.
As for grief - some of us are knitted with it. Grief is not other. Grief frames process, ways of living, and even choices.
Solitude is a vehicle to understanding
Solitude is the miracle
Stone Yard Devotional is my favourite Charlotte Wood novel, to date. It will sit with me always, and it will live on my shelf - there anytime I need it.
The question at the heart of Stone Yard Devotional is forgiveness, how does forgiveness work? Especially self forgiveness? A daughter - mother relationship that comes into its own, in analysis, analysis that leans into the stories that happen around us, and with us. The observations that are often only made many years later. Understanding that's only possible (perhaps) when time has past.
As for grief - some of us are knitted with it. Grief is not other. Grief frames process, ways of living, and even choices.
Solitude is a vehicle to understanding
Solitude is the miracle
Stone Yard Devotional is my favourite Charlotte Wood novel, to date. It will sit with me always, and it will live on my shelf - there anytime I need it.
September 29, 2024
"When I think about the phases of my life, it is as a series of rooms behind me, each with a door to a previous room left open, behind which is another room, and another and another. The rooms are not quite empty, not exactly dark, but they are shadowy, with indistinct shapes, and I don't like to think about them much. When I hear the name 'Helen Parry', I think of those rooms furthest back, in the deepest shadows" pp. 80
This was a mesmerising and powerful read for me. I adored the Charlotte Wood novels that I have previously read and this book surpassed all my expectations. The writing is sparse and beautiful, with a very eerie, mysterious quality to it. This is written in a journal entry style, with the MC reflecting on a variety of present issues and memories of the past. The themes and messages feel very true to real life and were very moving. So well done!
I have my fingers crossed that Charlotte Wood wins the Booker!!
This was a mesmerising and powerful read for me. I adored the Charlotte Wood novels that I have previously read and this book surpassed all my expectations. The writing is sparse and beautiful, with a very eerie, mysterious quality to it. This is written in a journal entry style, with the MC reflecting on a variety of present issues and memories of the past. The themes and messages feel very true to real life and were very moving. So well done!
I have my fingers crossed that Charlotte Wood wins the Booker!!
September 14, 2024
Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.
For me this is a dark, ambiguous novel. Exploring the themes of grief and our own mortality. The narrator and protagonist of this novel is never named but you get a strong feeling that this narrator is the author or at least a vehicle used to express the author’s memories and experiences.
We never truly find out why the narrator has left her husband, her job, her very way of life, and retreated to a religious community of nuns in the role of an oblate (I had to look up what an oblate is 😊). It cannot be for religious belief because she is an atheist. While not moving for religious reasons, it seems she may have moved for spiritual calmness and contemplation, enveloped in the nun’s world of prayer and routine. A way to stop and take stock of her life.
Not long after the move, the nunnery is besieged by a plague of mice. This plague succeeds in creating a horrible claustrophobic atmosphere. As time passes the mice increase in number and eventually encroach on almost every facet of life for the community. I am not sure what this plague is meant to represent, if anything at all. I believe that Wood wrote this during the Covid pandemic, and the novel is set during this pandemic, so perhaps the plague is a representation of her feelings at the time. Or maybe they represent us, devouring everything in their path as they multiply uncontrollably trying to satiate an equally uncontrollable lust.
Wood never lets the reader become bored, a distinct possibility with the setting, but fills the narrative with memories and flashbacks of the narrator’s life. She contemplates about the losses she has endured and the resulting grief.
Meanwhile, the world outside the narrator’s thoughts is eventful. There is the mice plague, there is the arrival of a nun who turns out to be a woman that the narrator and friends bullied while at school. As you can imagine this nun adds to the narrator’s thoughts, primarily grief and guilt.
No relationships are developed between the narrator and the nuns this book is very much about the narrator and her thoughts, memories, grief, reflection and contemplation.
For me this is a dark, ambiguous novel. Exploring the themes of grief and our own mortality. The narrator and protagonist of this novel is never named but you get a strong feeling that this narrator is the author or at least a vehicle used to express the author’s memories and experiences.
We never truly find out why the narrator has left her husband, her job, her very way of life, and retreated to a religious community of nuns in the role of an oblate (I had to look up what an oblate is 😊). It cannot be for religious belief because she is an atheist. While not moving for religious reasons, it seems she may have moved for spiritual calmness and contemplation, enveloped in the nun’s world of prayer and routine. A way to stop and take stock of her life.
Not long after the move, the nunnery is besieged by a plague of mice. This plague succeeds in creating a horrible claustrophobic atmosphere. As time passes the mice increase in number and eventually encroach on almost every facet of life for the community. I am not sure what this plague is meant to represent, if anything at all. I believe that Wood wrote this during the Covid pandemic, and the novel is set during this pandemic, so perhaps the plague is a representation of her feelings at the time. Or maybe they represent us, devouring everything in their path as they multiply uncontrollably trying to satiate an equally uncontrollable lust.
Wood never lets the reader become bored, a distinct possibility with the setting, but fills the narrative with memories and flashbacks of the narrator’s life. She contemplates about the losses she has endured and the resulting grief.
Meanwhile, the world outside the narrator’s thoughts is eventful. There is the mice plague, there is the arrival of a nun who turns out to be a woman that the narrator and friends bullied while at school. As you can imagine this nun adds to the narrator’s thoughts, primarily grief and guilt.
No relationships are developed between the narrator and the nuns this book is very much about the narrator and her thoughts, memories, grief, reflection and contemplation.
September 2, 2024
An agnostic environmentalist, suffering from unresolved grief, leaves her husband and disassociates from the world by moving back to her childhood hometown in New South Wales, Australia. After taking numerous retreats to the small local abbey, she decides to join them. Though she does not take the veil, she assists the nuns by managing the kitchen and running errands in town. The slim storyline revolves around a high-profile nun, Helen Parry, who is doing important climate change work abroad. Helen had grown up in the same small town as the protagonist and had been subjected to abusive treatment by both her mother and her schoolmates. The protagonist had been one of those schoolmates and is ashamed of her role in the bullying.
Another nun from this small abbey, Sister Jenny, was murdered while engaging in missionary work, and Helen is accompanying her remains back to the abbey for burial. There has been inner conflict among nuns – particularly between those who believe in living a life of contemplation and prayer versus those who believe in living their faith through action in the outside world. The novel takes the form of a journal being written by our unnamed protagonist. The present-day storyline takes place during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which was also a time of the “plague of mice” in New South Wales.
I could easily relate to the protagonist’s desire to disconnect from our world. She gave up her environmental work completely. I would have liked to understand more about her reasons, but one can infer them from her diary entries. I imagine the point is that she continues the effort on a smaller scale, one that is controllable at the individual level, by growing the abbey’s food and preparing it in a more ecologically sound manner. I would have preferred less about the plague of mice, but I realize it is connected to one of the author’s themes about the damage humanity has done to our planet.
It is an introspective book written in short direct prose in keeping with diary or journal entries. It explores grief, guilt, forgiveness, and mortality. Some may view this as a novel of despair, but I do not see it that way. I think it shows the many tiny ways we can attempt to make a difference in a world that often seems full of chaos, noise, conflict, and resistance to change. We can simplify. We can create calm by following routines and limiting our exposure. We do not have to be celebrities or activists to make a difference. There are many other ways to interpret this book, and I think it would make an excellent choice to discuss in a group.
Another nun from this small abbey, Sister Jenny, was murdered while engaging in missionary work, and Helen is accompanying her remains back to the abbey for burial. There has been inner conflict among nuns – particularly between those who believe in living a life of contemplation and prayer versus those who believe in living their faith through action in the outside world. The novel takes the form of a journal being written by our unnamed protagonist. The present-day storyline takes place during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which was also a time of the “plague of mice” in New South Wales.
I could easily relate to the protagonist’s desire to disconnect from our world. She gave up her environmental work completely. I would have liked to understand more about her reasons, but one can infer them from her diary entries. I imagine the point is that she continues the effort on a smaller scale, one that is controllable at the individual level, by growing the abbey’s food and preparing it in a more ecologically sound manner. I would have preferred less about the plague of mice, but I realize it is connected to one of the author’s themes about the damage humanity has done to our planet.
It is an introspective book written in short direct prose in keeping with diary or journal entries. It explores grief, guilt, forgiveness, and mortality. Some may view this as a novel of despair, but I do not see it that way. I think it shows the many tiny ways we can attempt to make a difference in a world that often seems full of chaos, noise, conflict, and resistance to change. We can simplify. We can create calm by following routines and limiting our exposure. We do not have to be celebrities or activists to make a difference. There are many other ways to interpret this book, and I think it would make an excellent choice to discuss in a group.
August 7, 2024
Very mid.
This is a heavily religious Australian novel about a woman who moves to a religious community to escape her life. She is forced to adapt to the life here but spends the novel ruminating on her past and her childhood. It was a slow moving book which not much going on in the way of plot. There was a slight strange vibe to it but not enough to get me hooked or make me super interested in the book as a whole. It's not something I'm really going to be thinking about a lot but I'm glad I've explored a bit more Australian literature.
This is a heavily religious Australian novel about a woman who moves to a religious community to escape her life. She is forced to adapt to the life here but spends the novel ruminating on her past and her childhood. It was a slow moving book which not much going on in the way of plot. There was a slight strange vibe to it but not enough to get me hooked or make me super interested in the book as a whole. It's not something I'm really going to be thinking about a lot but I'm glad I've explored a bit more Australian literature.
August 30, 2024
3.5 stars
March 24, 2024
G’day mate, here we have an absolute didgeridoo (think unrelenting, droning style narrative) of a book.
Sorry Shelia’s (or Charlotte Wood I guess), I tired. I really did.
I mean, at least I finished it (despite the fact I seriously considered giving up at about the 1/2 way mark…naively optimistic of me I now know)
Comprised of a monastery, a mice infestation (don’t even get me started on how this -quite literally, took up almost a third of the “plot”), morals, memories and a recent marital separation, Stone Yard Devotional is a meandering (understatement) -and frankly mundane (to the max) account of a middle aged woman clearly going through some sort of midlife crisis/breakdown.
Despite there being interesting themes scattered throughout (grief, morality, identity -heck, even religion) the novel is instead, far too preoccupied with self indulgent, navel gazing “woe is me” ruminations -oh, and how to deal (or not as the case may be here) with a plague (and I mean PLAGUE, why on earth were there so many? Where (and why!) in holy heck did they keep coming from exactly?) of mice, reeking havoc on the nunneries!
Pointless and plotless, frankly I wouldn’t bother.
1 v sad star
Sorry Shelia’s (or Charlotte Wood I guess), I tired. I really did.
I mean, at least I finished it (despite the fact I seriously considered giving up at about the 1/2 way mark…naively optimistic of me I now know)
Comprised of a monastery, a mice infestation (don’t even get me started on how this -quite literally, took up almost a third of the “plot”), morals, memories and a recent marital separation, Stone Yard Devotional is a meandering (understatement) -and frankly mundane (to the max) account of a middle aged woman clearly going through some sort of midlife crisis/breakdown.
Despite there being interesting themes scattered throughout (grief, morality, identity -heck, even religion) the novel is instead, far too preoccupied with self indulgent, navel gazing “woe is me” ruminations -oh, and how to deal (or not as the case may be here) with a plague (and I mean PLAGUE, why on earth were there so many? Where (and why!) in holy heck did they keep coming from exactly?) of mice, reeking havoc on the nunneries!
Pointless and plotless, frankly I wouldn’t bother.
1 v sad star
November 13, 2023
4.5 stars . I love how Charlotte Wood was able to convincingly insinuate herself into this setting through her protagonist. I was fully convinced by her portrayal of a woman who is seeking (or hiding) from understanding of how we can make sense or atone for the many missteps we all make in life. As she reminisces about her own miscalculations in life she also perceives her own mother’s life through the mirage that is childhood, making her mother appear saintly and courageous. We are vaguely made aware that the cloistered women in this story have retreated (or found cause) because they have found themselves lacking in someway or they prefer to not deal with life beyond an essential existence.
The mouse plague creates the perfect atmosphere of dread and collapse in our environment, that is unfortunately a real phenomenon. The story of Helen Parry (and what a great name) made me wonder how some people are able to find a way to push through the negative experiences in life and choose to make themselves bigger while other people shrink into a smaller world.
The mouse plague creates the perfect atmosphere of dread and collapse in our environment, that is unfortunately a real phenomenon. The story of Helen Parry (and what a great name) made me wonder how some people are able to find a way to push through the negative experiences in life and choose to make themselves bigger while other people shrink into a smaller world.
November 15, 2023
A quiet slow read. Beautifully written. Set on the Monaro Plains, not too far from where I live. I could picture the descriptions of the landscape and climate exactly. The mouse plague was biblical and there has been a recent mouse plague in the region over the covid pandemic. Strangely for us living in the 'burbs (well for us anyway) it wasn't too bad, I only had one mouse run over my foot during that time, but it was the talk of the district. Glad I read it but I'm not sure it really was the right time for me to read it. Maybe a reread is in order in the future. I'm interested to see what she comes up with next.
October 5, 2023
“All that was needed was time, and nature. Anything that had lived could make itself useful, become nourishment in death”.
Stone Yard Devotional was complex and profound. This is a story about a woman who turned her back on her life in Sydney. She is drained, emotionally spent. She retreats to her childhood town, and seeks solace and a home among a group of Catholic nuns. She picks up the traditions of the nuns, even though she is not there to join the order. The rituals and traditions become second nature, like a structure that she was missing in her life, to reorder her thoughts and provide a space to contemplate and ask questions herself.
“Visitant: a guest or visitor like Helen Parry, or a supernatural being, an apparition, like a saint. Like a delivery of bones, like a plague.”
The mouse plague was a fascinating element to this book. It provoked anxiety, dread, panic: exhaustion. Different characters had different reactions; some resilient, and for others, it was the last straw. The fact that the mice stayed away from the ‘good room” had a miraculous or divine reverence about it.
We are taken back to the woman’s childhood, and reminisce about her mother and school years. Observations and questions of the past permeate the present. We are privy to the woman’s thoughts, and what she is trying to unpack in her mind, and the whole process of how the unpacking is unfolding; almost like it was trying to break the fourth wall. I felt a sense of soundlessness and deliberation as the woman walked through the property owned by the nuns. Yet it was not entirely a monastic life: there was a renouncement of the outside world, yet so much conflict in adopting a devotion to the spiritual soul. It is hard, and that is right to be so; sacrifice is never easy.
Thank you to #allenandunwin and #netgalley for the #gifted copy to read.
Stone Yard Devotional was complex and profound. This is a story about a woman who turned her back on her life in Sydney. She is drained, emotionally spent. She retreats to her childhood town, and seeks solace and a home among a group of Catholic nuns. She picks up the traditions of the nuns, even though she is not there to join the order. The rituals and traditions become second nature, like a structure that she was missing in her life, to reorder her thoughts and provide a space to contemplate and ask questions herself.
“Visitant: a guest or visitor like Helen Parry, or a supernatural being, an apparition, like a saint. Like a delivery of bones, like a plague.”
The mouse plague was a fascinating element to this book. It provoked anxiety, dread, panic: exhaustion. Different characters had different reactions; some resilient, and for others, it was the last straw. The fact that the mice stayed away from the ‘good room” had a miraculous or divine reverence about it.
We are taken back to the woman’s childhood, and reminisce about her mother and school years. Observations and questions of the past permeate the present. We are privy to the woman’s thoughts, and what she is trying to unpack in her mind, and the whole process of how the unpacking is unfolding; almost like it was trying to break the fourth wall. I felt a sense of soundlessness and deliberation as the woman walked through the property owned by the nuns. Yet it was not entirely a monastic life: there was a renouncement of the outside world, yet so much conflict in adopting a devotion to the spiritual soul. It is hard, and that is right to be so; sacrifice is never easy.
Thank you to #allenandunwin and #netgalley for the #gifted copy to read.
September 12, 2024
God I am fucking BEASTING through this longlist, somebody stop this man
October 5, 2024
Like a good number of the novels on this year’s Booker Longlist, the theme of spirituality features. Stone Yard Devotional does veer in this territory, It also be the more extreme one on the list.
The book’s narrator goes to a convent as part of a retreat. She ends up feeling secure and moves in, despite being an atheist. There, she commits to chores. Then three things happen:
The first is a plague of mice.
The second is that the bones of a murdered nun are discovered and will be shipped to the convent.
The third is that the person accompanying the bones is a person from the narrator’s childhood, and the memories of her aren’t particularly good.
I would say that fourth is COVID-19 but I’m guessing the book takes place during the third lockdown where things eased up slightly.
With all these happenings, the narrator feels existential dread but then this morphs into an exploration into grief, which is the book’s main theme.
If I made this sound messy, it isn’t. Stone Yard Devotional is a quietly profound book which throws some surprises along the way. From spirituality to horror, the book throws a lot of things at a relentless pace. Oh and if you want someone to write a horrific mouse plague, Charlotte Wood is your person.
The book’s narrator goes to a convent as part of a retreat. She ends up feeling secure and moves in, despite being an atheist. There, she commits to chores. Then three things happen:
The first is a plague of mice.
The second is that the bones of a murdered nun are discovered and will be shipped to the convent.
The third is that the person accompanying the bones is a person from the narrator’s childhood, and the memories of her aren’t particularly good.
I would say that fourth is COVID-19 but I’m guessing the book takes place during the third lockdown where things eased up slightly.
With all these happenings, the narrator feels existential dread but then this morphs into an exploration into grief, which is the book’s main theme.
If I made this sound messy, it isn’t. Stone Yard Devotional is a quietly profound book which throws some surprises along the way. From spirituality to horror, the book throws a lot of things at a relentless pace. Oh and if you want someone to write a horrific mouse plague, Charlotte Wood is your person.
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