Віддана Кам’яному двору

by Charlotte Wood, Анастасія Плахотня (Translator)

До віддаленого австралійського монастиря на кілька днів навідується жінка в пошуках тиші й відпочинку, однак вирішує залишитися в ньому на невизначений час. Незабаром стає відомо, що в цю тиху місцину доправлять останки монахині-волонтерки, яка колись мешкала тут, а потому подалася в Бангкок, де її вбили за дивних обставин. Додому її супроводить екоактивістка, яку в дитинстві цькувала головна героїня книги. А тим часом на всю країну через глобальне потепління обрушується пошесть мишей, і монастир захлинається смородом мишачих тіл.

Серед природи, у монастирі, в якому панує дещо суперечливий дух сестринства, головна героїня поринає у спогади й аналізує на сторінках щоденника життя, яке воно є: з його недосконалістю, несправедливістю чи неприємною правдою.

Австралійська письменниця Шарлотта Вуд (1965) у книзі «Віддана Кам’яному двору» подає своє бачення, як примиритися з минулим, здобути підтримку, заслужити прощення, відшукати супокій; як, не вірячи, знайти віру.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Contemporary, Book Club, Religion

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 3, 2023

About the author

Charlotte 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.

Reviews

[Ron Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given the monastic pacing of Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional,” I suppose it’s appropriate that we’ve had to wait patiently for it. Wood’s fellow Australians have been praising this story about a small abbey of nuns since the novel was published in 2023. Last year, it was a finalist for Britain’s Booker Prize. And now, as though publishing were operating by steam ship, “Stone Yard Devotional” has finally arrived in the United States.

It’s just as extraordinary as the whispers from abroad suggested. But don’t recommend it to your book club because if some of your members don’t like it — and some certainly won’t — you may not have the stamina to tolerate them any longer.

The unnamed narrator of “Stone Yard Devotional” is a woman of a certain age who’s joined a remote Catholic order — or, if not joined, at least moved in. With a caustic sense of wit and an unrelenting critical eye, she’s hardly the typical postulant. She’s troubled by “the savagery of the Catholic Church.” Shoveling compost is the closest she ever gets to prayer. She’s nauseated by sisters prattling on about how they “fell in love with Jesus.” Nobody asks, but she confesses that she’s an atheist.

And yet, for all the narrator’s self-conscious rejections of religion, “Stone Yard Devotional” is a deeply spiritual novel. Marilynne Robinson’s Calvinist heart might protest, but this tale of sojourn among the nuns is founded on the same rock of introspection that anchors the “Gilead” series. It’s a years-long night wrestling with an angel capable of dislocating a thigh or a life. Wood’s narrator pursues fundamentally spiritual concerns: What is our purpose? Can we be forgiven for acts of callousness and neglect? Why are we here?

Why the narrator is here in this abbey is a source of persistent mystery at the center of “Stone Yard Devotional.” On her first visit, she says, “The place has the feel of a 1970s health resort or eco-commune, but is not....

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 for nearly all the characters. A woman enters an Australian nunnery, in more ways than one, during Covid-19
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 I 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...

[Christy fictional_traits · Rating 4 out of 5]

'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.

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jonas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I traveled to Australia thirty years ago. It was a wonderful experience, but it is such a large continent/country that my experience was limited. I love to travel by book, and so grateful to "return" to Australia and experience a new part of this country and its people.

Stone Yard Devotional was the right book, at the right time for me having finished reading it on Mother's Day weekend. The novel touches on many subjects, but the relationship between mothers and daughters is most prominent. I loved the narrator's mother. She had a love for the earth and its inhabitants like no other. The narrator re-encounters the young girl, Helen Parry, from their teen years that was bullied, excluded, and ostracized. Helen's relationship with her mother is the undercurrent to the novel.

There are many big themes to contemplate in this meditation on life, including care for the earth, refugees, endangered species, and fellow humans regardless of their background and health. The author also touches on racism and capitalism. I greatly enjoyed the observations on and investigations of the topics explored. I particularly liked the contemplation of prayer and why people choose "the life" of the religious. Climate change is the cause for "the mouse plague" which is the ongoing external conflict as characters come to terms with their internal struggles.

Letting go, grieving, and forgiveness are ever present concepts in our lives and the lives of the characters of the novel. The reader has the opportunity to look back on the cruelties and indifferences of youth, and how we don't always get the opportunity to "set things right" with the people we've hurt. The ending was beautifully written and the title encapsulates the entirety of the novel.

[Jaclyn]

The 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.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.”

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I obviously loved this book. Despite the slow, contemplative pace and no real plot, I finished it in 2 afternoons. It's written as a diary of sorts, by a middle aged woman who first goes to the Abbey on a 5 day retreat, then joins the nuns full time, though she is not religious, has no calling and doesn't really know herself why she's there. The Abbey is an escape from the world for her, quite simply. How do you review a book like this?

No plot doesn't mean nothing happens. There's a mouse plague that is pretty horrendous, the return of the bones of a murdered nun 30 years after her death that becomes a real problem, and a famous, headline grabbing nun who just happened to go to high school with our unnamed narrator, had a horrible home life and was tormented and shamed by the other girls.

This becomes an introspective meditation on guilt, the nature of forgiveness, unresolved grief and how to live in the world.

Though I myself loved this book and the gentle pace, I do realize that a great many readers will not. It is certainly not for everyone, and you will know very quickly whether you want to continue. I said there is no plot, that doesn't mean there is no drama. There's plenty of drama, but it's all interior.

[Trudie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank goodness that’s over.
Not for me this Charlotte Wood.

Death, Nuns, and a Mouse plague about covers it.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional is an intimate exploration of grief, spirituality, and the quiet beauty of an untethered existence.

Set in a small rural town with a tranquil monastery at its core, the novel follows an unnamed woman escaping from her everyday existence. She retreats (an interesting word with multiple meanings here) to the confines of the religious center to experience solitude and peace for a brief moment. But her stay extends into something life-altering, causing her to reflect on her past actions and beliefs and confront how they've brought her to the present.

The setting feels almost dreamlike—hovering between the mundane and the mystical. The landscape the author paints is both grounded and ethereal, a place where time seems to slow and dissolve, allowing the protagonist’s reflections to sink deeper. Every detail of the environment, from the sandstone monastery to the eucalyptus-dappled light, serves as a mirror to the inner life of the unnamed narrator, creating a sense of place so strong it feels like another character in the story.

The narrative unfolds in a diaristic and deeply personal style, drawing readers into the heart and mind of the main character as she grapples with her past and the aftershocks of profound loss. The first-person narration gives the novel an immediacy that feels both raw and restrained. It’s as though we’re reading a private diary, filled with unspoken fears and quiet epiphanies, bringing us into close communion with her contemplative journey. The structure of the story, almost like a meditation itself, allows the reader to experience the ebb and flow of her reflections, creating a powerful connection that lingers well beyond the final page.

The book heavily focuses on themes of existence, belief, and the search for meaning which are interwoven with more contemporary threads, such as climate change, immigration, and the call for inclusivity in a fractured world. Wood doesn’t shy away from these complex topics but instead lets them seep in subtly, much like the encroaching mice plague that haunts the novel’s setting. The monastery, a symbol of faith and tradition, stands in contrast to the broader societal changes that the narrator contemplates—questions of who belongs, what we owe to each other, and what remains sacred in a world in flux. This tension between old and new ways of thinking enriches the narrator’s musings on love, belonging, and her place in a community she is both part of and apart from.

What elevates the novel is its strong ending, which ties the narrative together in a satisfying way. The final pages offer a sense of clarity and closure that feels earned, yet not forced. Upon finishing, I found myself reflecting back on the novel’s beginning, noticing the subtle parallels that bring the story full circle. It’s a novel that invites a second reading, where the echoes of its opening chapters deepen the emotional impact of its conclusion.

Ultimately, Stone Yard Devotional is a quiet but profound novel that invites readers to sit with their own discomforts and questions about life’s purpose. Through the lens of one woman’s spiritual and emotional pilgrimage, Charlotte Wood offers a narrative that is as generous as it is introspective, challenging us to find grace in the fleeting moments of connection and clarity amidst the uncertainties of our time. It’s an understated yet powerful read that left me with much to ponder, even after the final page was turned.

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Stone Yard Devotional" is a series of beautifully written, undated journal entries of a middle-aged woman living at an abbey. Stone Yard Abbey is located in the dry, brown Monara Plains in New South Wales, Australia. The narrator was a former environmentalist who devoted her life to disappearing species. She felt despair over the state of the world and her failed marriage. She was also still grieving over the deaths of her parents. After several five-day stays in a cabin, she moved into the main building with the small group of sisters. She never became a nun and she was not religious, but her writing is very thoughtful and spiritual.

The abbey was self-supporting, and the narrator took over the cooking and shopping. There were three main visitations that concerned her. The first was a plague of mice due to the lack of rain in a nearby region of Australia. The second was the arrival of the bones of a murdered activist nun who had ventured into the world. The third visitation was Helen, now an activist nun, who had been taunted by the girls in school when she and the narrator were young.

Forgiving and asking for forgiveness play an important role in the narrator's spiritual journey. A strong awareness of nature and our relationship to the earth is also a prominent theme. There is very little plot in "Stone Yard Devotional," but the book was very engaging.

[Bianca · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Flo · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Dylan Kakoulli · Rating 1 out of 5]

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

[Sujoya - theoverbookedbibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

RTC

[Nat K · Rating 4 out of 5]

*** Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize ***

”Do you have to believe in God to join a religious order? Nobody has ever asked me, specifically, about belief. And anyway, I haven’t ever joined. Not really.”

Our unnamed narrator attends a retreat at the convent near her childhood home in regional NSW. Her marriage has ended, and she is burnt out from her job and the various causes she has followed and worked for passionately. The loss of a friend has also proven to be a turning point, and quiet and solitude is what she craves.

Going back to the area she grew up in and left over twenty years ago brings up all sorts of memories and thoughts. She drives down streets she’d forgotten about. She remembers her school years and the cruelty of human nature to gang up against a school mate who was perceived to be different and for this reason was a “threat” to the others.

As time passes our narrator doesn’t return to her old life in the inner city, to the hustle and bustle. While not joining the convent in a religious sense, she has easily moved her life to one of silence, hard work and routine. She appreciates the value of doing the same things each day. The morning and evening prayers. The ascetic lifestyle.

There's a very telling moment where she unsubscribes online from the many eco activist organisations that she'd been following. Further disengaging herself from her old life, one click at a time.

A blast from the past arrives at the convent in the form of a classmate who'd been targeted and bullied for years, including by our narrator. The girl who was different is now a nun working in poor communities. Slowly our narrator learns of how difficult her childhood was, and how cruel the incessant ostracising. Which proves how little we truly know of what’s going on in someone else’s life.

The mouse plague - which was a massive problem in country NSW for several years due to drought - is a constant throughout this book. It could symbolize all sorts of things, and it’s fitting that this was incorporated into this story. Obstacles, frustrations, nature. The cycle of life. How man fights nature and nature fights back.

This is a deeply contemplative book. Which, depending on what stage of life you’re at, you may already have pondered the same things our narrator has. About past hurts made to you and from you. About grief that we carry around which never really leaves us. About viewing your parents through a different lens as you yourself age. About guilt and forgiveness. And an understanding that perhaps there isn’t a point to any of it and there are no answers.

Without having read all of the Booker Prize shortlist books this year, I am quietly confident that this has a good chance of being the last book standing. Charlotte Wood has the uncanny ability - as she did with her fabulous book The Weekend - to write about women of a certain age with compassion while openly showing their foibles without apology.

In a world full of noise, something forces you to slow down to read this book in pace with the life of the narrator. Good luck Charlotte, I hope you win! Either way, another well thought out and emotive book.

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Bruce Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure why, but I’m drawn serious literary examinations of faith. Not because I have any — I would describe myself as intellectually atheistic and emotionally agnostic — but because I see such books as earnest efforts to wrestle with our deep need as humans to connect with something larger than ourselves, to give us some small bit of assurance that there’s a point to all of this. Sometimes these needs find expression, as -- regrettably -- they do now, in politics and culture wars and tribalism. I read books about these things too and am left saddened and often angry. But the novels that concern themselves with the bigger questions of Meaning, they speak to a different, more intimate part of me.

I think, for example, of Mark Salzman’s splendid novel “Lying Awake” (2000). A Carmelite nun is widely known for her piety and the ecstatic, almost miraculous visions she has. When it is discovered that she has a treatable brain tumor, the question must be asked: is the tumor creating these visions or is it somehow the mechanism through which she is able to receive visions of the divine? Will surgery cure her, or will it cut her off from her special connection to God?

There are other books I might name that fall into this category. Marilyn Robinson’s “Gilead” novels, certainly. Yaa Gyasi’s “Transcendent Kingdom.” “The Brothers Karamazov.” Even — no, not “even,” because it truly does deserve a place on this list— Mary Doria Russell’s sci-fi novel “The Sparrow.” What links these titles for me is that they don’t start out from a place of faith but come at the matter with curiosity, respect, and intelligence. There is no great epiphany at the end of these novels, no voice from above demanding "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?", that neatly wraps things up and answers all questions. There are only the questions, and that place inside us midway between emotion and intellect where the questions reside.

Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional” now has a place in this company. Not because it’s about faith or belief or anything like that but because those things silently lie just outside the story, like dim shadows cast by an uncertain light. The protagonist is a middle aged Australian woman. She is never named. Her marriage has fallen apart, but there’s nothing to suggest there was anything acrimonious about the split; they both simply realized it was over. She doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t feel any need to pray or even understand what the point of prayer is. But for some reason her burnout leads her to a remote Catholic retreat. She stays for a time, leaves, and then — to her own surprise and the surprise of everyone she knows -- comes back. And stays this time.

The book chronicles her life there — her sometimes awkward interactions with the sisters (phrases like “biblical mumbo jumbo” come frequently to her mind), the chores she takes upon herself to earn her keep — and bits and pieces of her life before the retreat. The memories that come to her, the things she did when young but now regrets. I won’t say much about what happens in “Stone Yard Devotional,” beyond noting that the story is told with humor ("I wonder if the nuns annoy each other. Whether one’s very low bowing is seen as pretentious by another; or if another’s failure to hit the right note drives her neighbour nuts"), sensitivity, a certain irreverence ("What is the meaning of this ancient Hebrew bombast about enemies and borders and persecution? What’s the point of their singing about it day after day after day?") , and guileless humanity -- by which I mean, the narrative voice speaks clearly to us, as if this unnamed woman were someone we've met by accident and find, as we listen to her, that we rather like. She will discover an unexpected (and not particularly welcome) personal connection at the retreat. And she will endure a plague of truly biblical magnitude when a drought sends thousands and thousands of mice into every building and field in the retreat. (Such infestations seem to occur with some regularity in Australia. I almost included here a link to video footage of a recent outbreak but decided not to. It truly is horrifying. If anyone’s interested, they’re really easy to find.) But mostly we come to know her best in the moments between these “events”.

“Stone Yard Devotional” is an unassuming and deeply human story about our need for connection with others, our uncertainty about what it means to be a good person, and where we fit in the scheme of things. Wood doesn’t throw any of this in our face. Rather, she lets them quietly percolate up through the thoughts and memories of an ordinary woman wrestling with questions that, while ordinary in themselves, truly matter.

“Stone Yard Devotional” was on the shortlist for the 2024 Booker Prize.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stone Yard Devotional strikes me as a very typical Booker book: chilly, elegant, balancing passages of banality against plainly stated emotion, with a pinch of oddness. I really liked parts of it, specifically the way the narrator discusses her relationship with her parents and enduring grief over their deaths. At its strongest, this narrative can be haunting. Overall, however, I’m left with the feeling that it’s less than the sum of its parts. (Probably should note, though, that I read this by switching between the ebook and audiobook, which may have magnified the sense that it was disjointed and/or overly digressive.)

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insomnia is something that comes and goes in my life, but it has been pretty constant in the last few months. I mention this for two reasons. First, my insomnia allowed me to finish this book at about 3 am, and I have had a good deal of time to think about this since my exhausted brain is doing a piss-poor job of focusing on work. Second, the reasons for my insomnia are feelings of grief and helplessness stemming from both the end of the world as I have known it and from anniversaries of the deaths of my parents and of a friend who I considered my soulmate. It is that sense of grief and hopelessness stemming both from the early loss of her parents and a close friend, and the death of the planet, that guide our narrator in Stone Yard Devotional. I think the narrator is in late middle age (so her parents' deaths are long past) but if her actual age is given I missed it. The festering grief and emptiness lead the narrator to abandon her home, job in environmental activism, marriage, and friends to join a convent, notwithstanding the fact that she does not believe in God.

The decampment to the nunnery allows a lot of time for reflection on past actions that evoke feelings of regret and the need to atone. Not one of her constant ruminations touch on contentment, happiness, joy, or even equanimity. I had a disconnect with that. I don't think we are supposed to attribute all of the choices and actions (or inactions) presented to clinical depression. It, therefore, seemed odd to me that there were no pleasant thoughts. She relates tales of her iconoclastic and supportive mother and loving father, which are nice things, but she shares no pleasant contact with them. She thinks about how her mother's environmentalism and rejection of church made others think her family was weird and should be avoided. She recalls that her mother's commitment and goodness made her lie so her parents would not be disappointed in her choices. She makes clear how great a loss her parents' early deaths were. She relates nothing of fun or comfort or wonder in those relationships. It is all sadness and anxiety. Our narrator has a sly sense of humor that peeks out of the gloom on occasion, but it is not a happy humor. There is no generosity in it. This is humor borne of frustration, depression, and disappointment. This is humor as trauma response.

The action in the book, if we can call it action. mostly comes from climate change and political strife. The most notable event is the onslaught of heavy rains and high temperatures that lead to a spectacular rodent infestation. They eat everything in the convent, destroying the oven's insulation and wiring, the piano, the window screens. They even eat the songbirds and the chickens who supply the sisters with eggs (and eventually they gnaw on one another.) Their sounds and their smells pervade everything. For a person like me with a rodent-phobia this was horrifying (and did not help with my insomnia) but I don't think this is intended as horror. At the same time they are battling the mice of the apocalypse the sisters are separated from their ties to the outside world by Covid. Another aggravating event, the sisters receive the body of a radical nun who had disappeared in Thailand years ago. The nun was running a women's shelter and was hated there because abusing women was a cultural norm and she was imposing Western values. When at the convent, this sister had difficult relationships, but the sisters are committed to burying her on the grounds despite that not being legal. To add insult to injury the body comes accompanied by an activist who turns out to be a former classmate of the narrator. The activist was the target of bullying and physical abuse at the hands of her classmates (including the narrator) which triggers further feelings of pain and regret and retreat.

So there is a lot of pain and regret and retreat here, but there are also moving observations on forgiveness and focus and devotion (not necessarily to God.) I cannot say I related to the narrator, whose answer to her pain seems to be to make herself as small as humanly possible without actually dying, to have no impact of any sort on anything. As I mentioned at the top of this magnum opus I empathize with her grief over her losses, but her response feels selfish to me and her refusal to seek a way out is mystifying. This is all austere and meditative, a quiet celebration of capitulation. The author's keen insight and beautiful writing is notable, and I am sure my failure to understand the narrator is user error. I am sure other readers will feel differently.

If you are looking for resolution, you won't find any here. The best you get is a moment or two of respite. I don't need much in the way of resolution in my reading. The world doesn't tie things up in my experience, and I like stories that acknowledge that. I could have used some movement, though. I wanted the narrator to find some small sense of purpose or pleasure, or to choose to end her life. This is one I admired more than I liked. I do not regret the read, it gave me a lot to think about and, again, it is beautifully written. Ultimately though it was unsatisfying for me. I would go with a 3.5 if I could. Rounding up to 4 because I think the book was fully realized and beautifully crafted.

[Melly · Rating 5 out of 5]

"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!!

[Elena · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.”

[jaz ₍ᐢ. ̫.ᐢ₎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

(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

“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.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

(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.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

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...

...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...

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.