An extract from Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
The past comes knocking in Charlotte Wood’s fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and female friendship, set in an isolated religious community
The past comes knocking in Charlotte Wood’s fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and female friendship
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 New South Wales. She doesn’t believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living a 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…
Stone Yard Devotional was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.
Charlotte Wood
About the Author
Charlotte Wood lives in Sydney. She is the author of seven novels and three works of non-fictionWatch our film
Charlotte Wood on Stone Yard Devotional
‘Stone Yard Devotional grew from elements of my own life and childhood merging with an entirely invented story about an enclosed religious community. Writing it during pandemic lockdowns, followed by a serious illness – and the way these twin upheavals demolished so many of our consoling certainties – gave me an urgent instinct to shed anything inessential in my work. I wanted nothing trivial, nothing insincere in this book. And I wanted to try to master what Saul Bellow called ‘stillness in the midst of chaos’, risking a tonal restraint and depth that at the same time, I hope, shimmers with energy.’
Read the full interview here.
What the judges said
‘Sometimes a visitor becomes a resident, and a temporary retreat becomes permanent. This happens to the narrator in Stone Yard Devotional – a woman with seemingly solid connections to the world who changes her life and settles into a monastery in rural Australia. Yet no shelter is impermeable. The past, in the form of the returning bones of an old acquaintance, comes knocking at her door; the present, in the forms of a global pandemic and a local plague of mice and rats, demands her attention. The novel thrilled and chilled the judges – it’s a book we can’t wait to put into the hands of readers.’
The Booker Prize 2024 judges with the longlist
©Tom PilstonWhat the critics said
Frank Cottrell-Boyce, The Guardian
‘Wood is a writer of the most intense attention. Everything here – the way mice move, the way two women pass each other a confiding look, the way a hero can love the world but also be brusque and inconsiderate to those around them – it all rings true. It’s the story of a small group of people in a tiny town, but its resonance is global. This is a powerful, generous book.’
Gemma Nisbet, The West Australian
‘Reading the opening pages of Stone Yard Devotional, the latest novel by Stella Prize-winning Australian author Charlotte Wood, felt for me like sliding into a warm bath on a cool evening. A strange way, perhaps, to describe the experience of immersing myself in this sparse, meditative novel of grief, faith and morality, but also one that gets at some of the pleasure of knowing yourself to be in the skilful hands of a writer who — 10 books into a celebrated, lengthy career — really knows what she’s about.’
Shady Cosgrove, The Conversation
‘Stone Yard Devotional offers line-by-line writing that haunts, and descriptions and ways of seeing the world that linger. The novel’s ideas and questions have made me consider the complicated nature of belonging as a woman in a patriarchal order where women are frequently pitted against each other, and how complicated female relationships can be.’
Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times
‘Wood has said that she wanted to write about forgiveness, but there is little here by way of comfort. What the novel does instead is to force you to recognise your deepest fears about decay, extinction and suffering. It’s a beautiful, mature work that does not flinch from life.’
A woman settles into a monastery in rural Australia and discovers that no shelter is impermeable. This novel thrilled and chilled the judges
— The 2024 judges on Stone Yard Devotional
