Topics such as the veracity of memory and whether forgiveness is an obligation take center stage when a woman retreats from society to join a reclusive religious community in the Booker Prize-shortlisted Stone Yard Devotional by Australian author Charlotte Wood. The pensive novel opens with its unnamed narrator arriving at a small, rural convent outside of her hometown in southern Australia as a temporary reprieve from her marriage and job. By part two, she's been living in the cloistered community of sisters (without taking her own vows) for several years. The intentional monotony of life at the convent is interrupted by three upsettingly strange occurrences: a plague of mice, the discovery of the remains of a long-departed resident of the convent, and the arrival of someone from the narrator's past.
Wood (The Natural Way of Things; The Weekend) intersperses the primary plot with interstitial asides of memory and grief that will ring true for readers who have experienced their own sorrow as, in her newly quieted life, the narrator realizes that whatever a person's devastation, "there is no before or after. Even when the commotion of crisis has settled, it's still there." By giving readers a protagonist uncertain of what she's seeking, Wood's intensely insular novel ultimately poses the question of whether one has to be seeking something at all, showing that it's possible to find fulfillment in the bare bones of existence and how the repetition of simple tasks and appreciation of nature's harsh beauty are enough to constitute a life well lived. --Kristen Coates, editor and freelance reviewer