Stone Yard Devotional

The new Booker-shortlisted novel by Charlotte Wood, bestselling author of The Weekend and The Natural Way of Things.

A fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and the complicated beauty of 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 rural Australia.

But disquiet soon interrupts this secluded life. First, the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before are returned to the monastery, resurfacing years of grief and pain. And then, an unexpected and troubling visitor plunges the narrator further into her past...

Review

It's just as extraordinary as the whispers from abroad suggested . . . the quiet, intensely private voice of Stone Yard Devotional feels more intimate than a library of confessional novels . . . Wood has developed a style that relies on dislocation, juxtaposition and elision to suggest the currents of spiritual turmoil and resolution. A lesser artist would push too hard for tenderness, for meaning, for what Hemingway called "fake" mysticism . . . Ultimately, 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 -- Ron Charles ― Washington Post

I have rarely been so absorbed, so persuaded by a novel . . . 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 -- Frank Cottrell-Boyce ― Guardian

An exquisite, wrenching novel of leaving your life behind . . . 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

[Wood's] exquisite meditations on dread and disillusionment about the future, familiar to many of us, had, for me, a heartening and consoling force. -- Sigrid Nunez ― The New Yorker

Australian writer Charlotte Wood does for mice in her seventh novel what Alfred Hitchcock did for birds . . . 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 -- Johanna Thomas-Corr ― Sunday Times

A good read - intense, weird, brooding - and a fascinating look at the need to strip our lives back ― i paper

Unshowily explores forgiveness, accountability and despair in the face of the world's horrors -- The best fiction of 2024 ― Guardian

This is a transfixing novel about the way childhood events, be they seismic or seemingly banal, can haunt us in adulthood. Wood pares back her narrator's life and language to explore fundamental questions of loss, suffering and how we coexist with other people, other species and the environment, with a power and precision that means it will resonate with readers long after this year's Booker Prize has been awarded ― Financial Times

About the Author

Charlotte Wood is the author of seven novels and three books of non-fiction. Her novel Stone Yard Devotional was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. Earlier novels include The Natural Way of Things, which won the 2016 Stella Prize and was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, and The Weekend, which was an international bestseller. Her features and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Literary Hub and Sydney Morning Herald, among others. Charlotte lives in Sydney with her husband.