The unnamed narrator retreats to a nunnery – not to become a nun but to retreat, from a failed marriage, grief about her parents' deaths, and a world that is on fire.

I am a huge Charlotte Wood fan and this book is beautifully written. But I found it hard to become engaged in the narrator's endless navel gazing. And, to be bluntly honest, there were simply too many dead mouse for me to handle. I will still read Wood's next novel but this one is just not for me.

A new Charlotte Wood novel is ALWAYS something to celebrate! And wow, this is a writer at the top of her game. Make no mistake, this is a melancholy book, very introspective and stripped of too much plot. It may not appeal to everyone. But it’s a masterclass in in the craft of writing, and one that will leave you with with so much to contemplate.

It’s about an unnamed woman who leaves behind her life (including her work and marriage, both of which are failing to some degree) to stay for several months in a monastery run by nuns in her rural hometown. Later, we discover that the woman has actually made the move permanent; as the years go by she becomes a part of the daily life in this quiet place.

But things DO happen to disrupt the peace - the mouse plague, for one, and the overseas discovery of the bones of a nun who once lived in the monastery too. There is the re-appearance of Helen Parry, with whom the woman once went to school, now a nun herself. There is the neighbouring farmer, Richard, whom she tentatively befriends.

All this to say that the drama of the book is in its quiet developments and revelations. Wood is exploring grief - the loss of parents, of a marriage, climate grief. But also the smaller moments in a life that cause a grief of their own: the deaths or accidents that happen within a community, a moment of bullying at school, the loss of faith, or maybe just the realisation of how arbitrary and even unfair life can be.

Given the almost daily crises we see in the world right now, trying to understand ‘despair’ seems quite pertinent. But Wood is careful not to stray into depressive missives, particularly for the sake of it. It’s about making sense of the world, making sense of what our feelings towards it might be right now. And the effortless prose speaks for itself. Although there is a simplicity to the work, there’s also so much going on under the surface. It did make me feel sad, at times, but in a good way. In a way that made me realise how universal feeling sad is, how we’re together in that.

A change of pace for Charlotte Wood. This was not only an intriguing red but it physically calmed me as I read. I didn't want that to end. highly recommend

“Stone Yard Devotional” is a difficult novel to summarise, but not to read. It is a relatively short novel, and I found it thought provoking and interesting.

The novel is the internal musings of a woman living with a religious community in rural NSW. I can’t actually remember if the woman’s name is ever uttered; but it doesn’t matter, as she’s a vivid and interesting character nevertheless.

The narrator is not exactly a member of the religious (Catholic) community – she hasn’t taken orders and seems cynical about many aspects of religion and the church. But she started visiting for short retreats, and then one day – simply stayed.

She is not so much reflecting on her life, as reflecting on the way her younger self perceived things, and how she now sees those events or people. There are no startling revelations, but a slow realisation that the world was not quite what she thought when younger.

I didn’t make a particularly strong emotional connection with this narrative or character, but I was absorbed. The gentle rhythm of her days, in contrast with the sometimes hectic or emotionally fraught times she’s recalling, gave the novel a sense of peace – or perhaps resignation.

This will make you think about how you perceive other people, and how you experience events compared to their experience of the same events.

I enjoyed this novel, but it’s not for everyone. Strongly recommended if you’re looking for something that will provoke some internal soul searching, or if you’re willing to try something a little challenging in approach. You are less likely to enjoy it if you want a strong sense of resolution or a very distinct plot.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood is contemplative and reflective story. It is an exploration of life, death and religion. Retreating from city life of Sydney the protagonist turns to a modest monastery located near her childhood hometown in New South Wales, Monaro high country. Set during the Covid years we find her there, in this quiet retreat, in search of the meaning of life and to recuperate mentally and physically.

The publishers blurb is an excellent introduction:

“A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place she grew up, finding solace in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro.

She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she ruminates on her childhood in the nearby town. She finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget.

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 left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered.

Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.

With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished?”
Charlotte Wood is an excellent writer capturing the location and the depth of feelings of the protagonist.

Highly recommended read.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from Allen & Unwin via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

#StoneYardDevotional #NetGalley.

I feel terrible, but I didn't end up being able to finish "Stone Yard Devotional." As an independent bookseller, not loving a Charlotte Wood book is practically blasphemy. [Quickly makes sign of the cross gesture.]

There were definitely bits I liked - covid, the mice plague and a convent all make for an excellent setting. However, there was nothing to the story that made me want to read the next page. In saying that, Charlotte Wood is Charlotte Wood. I love her other novels and will continue to insist that every customer reads her, regardless.

I agree with another reviewer - this is a quiet contemplative read with lots of musings on life experience, death, and religion. The author’s writing is wonderful as ever. The religious contemplation was not an aspect I personally connected with. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

Award winning Australian author Charlotte Wood takes her main character to a retreat in her latest book Stone Yard Devotional. Set in a small, humble monastery in the Monaro high country near Australia’s Snowy Mountains mainly during the Covid years, the book follows one woman’s search for meaning and an understanding of the world.
The book opens with the unnamed narrator attending a retreat on the grounds of a small monastery close to the small country town where she grew up. While not religious she attends the services and watches the brown robed nuns at there work. Five years later and she has cut herself off from her former life and joined the monastery. While not a woman of faith, she believes that immersing herself in the life of the nuns will help her come to some sort of peace with her life and her past. But some of that past comes crashing back in the form of another nun, who is someone from her childhood.
Stone Yard Devotional manages to be both contemplative and full of reminiscence and nostalgia on one hand and quite visceral on the other. The grist of the novel is the narrator coming to terms with her past, and in particular her relationship with her mother, which is delivered in quick, evocative flashbacks. But all of this happens in and around the life of the monastery which is challenged by a mouse plague all the while trying to protect and organise to inter the bones of one of their own who died overseas. The mouse plague and how the nuns have to deal with it is rendered in almost horrifying detail - traps, poisons, mass graves – and gives an intense feel of just one of the challenges of rural life.
Stone Yard Devotional is quite a quiet, intimate, constrained novel. Wood manages to cover a lot of ground and bring plenty of depth to her protagonist while giving a great sense of the country that she is living in (and grew up in) and its challenges.

“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 turn her back on her life in Sydney. She is drained, emotionally spent. The place she retreats to is 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. Live 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 were 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 we catch a lot of reminiscing about her mother, and her school years. There are so many observations and questions of the past and from the past that 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 part the outside world, yet there was still 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 advanced copy to read.

'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.

I requested this one on @netgalley as soon as I saw it. I absolutely loved The Natural Way of Things when I read it a few years ago. I was not a huge fan of The Weekend though - except for the last chapter which did redeem it a little.

And now having finished this one, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. I did not love it, but I did not dislike it. It's a quiet contemplative novel about a woman who has kind of left her city life and joined a type of convent back in her home town. She is not religious but joins in a lot of their traditions and ways. While she is there she reflects on her life and we learn about her in snippets and memories. A lot of these focus on her mother who died when she was young, but there are also parts about her time at school her father and general musings.

I found it compulsive reading, like being in someone's head and hearing their inner thoughts and trying to figure them out as they try to figure themselves out. I was kind of reading and waiting for something major to happen (and a few smaller things did) but it never really climaxed. I never really got the point, but maybe that is the point? She is asking herself questions that may not have answers.

I think whilst writing this I have come to appreciate it more. I will be very interested to see what people think of this one - and I can feel some Australian award noms coming up. This one is out October 3.

5/5 for this gorgeous, sumptuous novel, with Australian gothic themes. Charlotte Wood has created a world to fall deeply deeply into.