Henk's Reviews > Stone Yard Devotional

Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker prize, after being the first Australian author since 2016 to make it on the longlist! 🇦🇺
Grief and how it can be permanent seems a key theme in the book and for nearly all the characters. A woman enters an Australian nunnery, in more ways than one, during Covid-19
Being here feels somehow like childhood, the hours are so long and there is so much waiting, staring into space. Absolutely nothing is asked of me, nothing expected.

I have a few friends who swear with meditation retreats, and the main character of Stone Yard Devotional takes the concept even further. A nunnery seems a reprieve for a middle aged woman after a failing marriage and coming to terms with dead parents. Also a wider theme of doing no harm by taking oneself out of the capitalist world, versus a husband who is fighting climate change and still has hope, in the terms of the main character, is interesting.

There is a dead sister found in Bangkok, a mice infestation due to climate change, a bullied girl from the past turned superstar nun (whatever that means, Charlotte Wood opens up a whole new world in a sense to me), another classmate working as handyman, financial destitution at the monastery: the book certainly doesn’t get dull or overly meditative.
Being in an environment with just 8 nuns doesn't help the main character get the hang of praying, maybe mirrored in the events she endures, with especially the mice getting increasingly biblical in terms of plague, chewing at literally everything including their own deceased and pigeons.

Meanwhile we have a lot of flashbacks to the growing up of the narrator and her relationship with her mother. In the end there is both catharsis from dead parents and from bullying in the past to be found. Overall this was for me a 3.5 star read that I managed to devour in a day and I enjoyed it more than the cover text made me think initially!

Quotes:
I murmur some generic sound

Most of us, lets face it, knew our place in the pecking order

If you don’t life the live your meant for it makes you ill

And I don’t know what my duty to that knowledge is, except to hold it.

Forgiveness is far from easy, not being judgemental in the world

2024 Booker prize personal ranking, shortlisted books in bold:
1. Held (4.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2. Playground (4.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
3. James (4*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
4. Wandering Stars (4*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
5. Headshot (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
6. The Safekeep (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
7. My Friends (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
8. Stone Yard Devotional (3.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
9. This Strange and Eventful History (3*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
10. Creation Lake (3*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
11. Enlightenment (3*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
12. Orbital (2.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
13. Wild Houses (2.5*) - Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...