Stone Yard Devotional: A Novel
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.
“Stone Yard Devotional is as extraordinary as you’ve heard.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“An exquisite, wrenching novel of leaving your life behind.” —Lauren Christensen, New York Times
"Meditative (but by no means uneventful)." —New York Times
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.
“Stone Yard Devotional is as extraordinary as you’ve heard.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“An exquisite, wrenching novel of leaving your life behind.” —Lauren Christensen, New York Times
"Meditative (but by no means uneventful)." —New York Times
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.
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Community Reviews
A tricky one to review and I feel this book could be polarising amongst our Book Group members. A deeply reflective, gentle, and quiet book that reads more like a memoir than a work of fiction. The main character (a woman who is never named) chooses to step out of the modern world and moves in with a small monastery of nuns in a remote part of Australia, close to where she grew up. Initially it appears this was for some temporary solace after the death of her mother and disintegration of her marriage. However, she ends up residing there permanently and foregoes capitalism for a life of relatively isolated introspection. The prose is beautiful and peaceful and gives the reader insight into replacing a life full of news, noise and chaos of the world with one of ritual, simplistic living and time to gently sift through ones life memories and thoughts without distraction. Time out is not an easy thing to do in the world we live in.
My first words upon finishing this book were “what an odd book.” They don’t mean I didn’t like it, but it was meditative, small and simple and so vast at once. A book about memory, misperceptions, love and loss, and the process of forgiveness or deciding not to forgive. I am just unsure what to make of it.
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