Stone Yard Devotional - by Charlotte Wood (Paperback)

About the Book

"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 rural Australia. 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 signaling 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"--

Book Synopsis

BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLIST
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR
A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR
A LOS ANGELES TIMES TOP FIFTEEN BOOK OF THE YEAR

"Stone Yard Devotional is as extraordinary as you've heard." --The Washington Post

"An exquisite, wrenching novel of leaving your life behind." --New York Times Book Review

"Riveting prose about how humans beat back despair."--Los Angeles Times

Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, a novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be good, from the award-winning author of The Weekend and The Natural Way of Things.

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 rural Australia. 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 signaling 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.

Meditative, moving, and finely observed, Stone Yard Devotional is a seminal novel from a writer of rare power, exploring what it means to retreat from the world, the true nature of forgiveness, and the sustained effect of grief on the human soul.

Review Quotes

Praise for Stone Yard Devotional

"Founded on the same rock of introspection that anchors the Gilead series....Stone Yard Devotional not only stays aloft but soars... A strange sense of engagement with these pages gives way to sheer gratitude for the chance to be in the presence of such restraint and wisdom." -Washington Post

"The novel is, in many ways, an extended meditative vigil...Activism, abdication, atonement, grace: In this novel no one of these paths is holier than another; Wood is more invested in noticing the human pursuit of holiness itself." --New York Times

"This meditative (but by no means uneventful) account includes a mouse infestation, a celebrity nun, a pair of complicated homecomings and countless reminders that the sacred and the profane not only coexist but complement one another." --New York Times

"Ms. Wood's pastoral novel is contemplative, curious, rewardingly conflicted and frequently beautiful. Ms. Wood writes ... with exceptional empathy. Most contemporary fiction plays out inside the echo chamber of a protagonist's psyche; its stories are devoted to confronting and working through a private trauma. But while Stone Yard Devotional is suffused with sorrow, it exhibits very little grievance. The narrator's observations are sensitive and impersonal, and they yield profound insights into the commonality of suffering." --Wall Street Journal

"Stone Yard Devotional is about one woman's inward journey to make sense of the world and her life when conflicts and chaos are abundant in both realms. . . A fierce and philosophical interrogation of history, memory, nature, and human existence." --Booker Prize judges' remarks

"I have rarely been so absorbed by a novel . . . A powerful, generous book." --Guardian

"A book about what it means to be good: simply and with great humility, it asks the big questions, leaving the reader feeling kinder, more brave, enlarged." --Anne Enright

"A novel of austere contemplation and personal devastation, its narrative driven by moral crisis rather than worldly action .... reflections on mortality seep into its fabric. For this is not a book of answers. Rather, it is a challenge: about how to be in the world, and how to be alone."--Times Literary Supplement

"A beautiful, mature work that does not flinch from life." --Sunday Times

"Wood threads a contemplative path for believers and nonbelievers alike. Reading her prose--sanded to deceptive simplicity--feels like spending time with a dear friend. What if attentiveness and "habitual kindness," the narrator seems to ask, are bedrocks of a moral life? A wise, consoling novel for disquieting times." - Kirkus (STARRED REVIEW)

"A jewel-like, introspective novel in which not all that much happens, yet worlds are revealed.... With its absorbing and deceptively simple narrative, Stone Yard Devotional is a beautiful testament to the rudiments of shedding the unessential and living a life of intention." --BookPage

About the Author

Charlotte Wood is the author of seven novels and three books of nonfiction. Her 2016 novel The Natural Way of Things won the Stella Prize in her native Australia and was joint winner of the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction. Her 2020 novel, The Weekend, was an international bestseller.