Stone Yard Devotional

The main character leaves her marriage and high-profile environmental activism role to move to a convent. She wants to be near the place where she grew up, and where her parents are buried, in a remote and arid part of Australia.

She comes here to find sanctuary within routines of prayers, singing and solitude. But it’s not all peace. There’s a plague of mice to contend with that’s visceral and confronting. Then a stroppy girl from her past turns up to bring home the bones of a nun who left on a mission in Thailand.

I love the earthiness of Charlotte Wood’s novel, which is deeply grounded in smells and chooks, mice and bones, the earth, daily relationships and routines. It’s about one woman’s relationship with herself in a place she feels compelled to be, even while seeing its limitations. This place gives her an anchor that she needs, even though she does not share in the faith of the community.

She makes a life here, for all its irritations, compromises and regrets. This book is a powerful and unsparing study of what life is when it is stripped bare of distractions.