Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

 

One weekend a woman comes to a convent in the rural Australia outback.  She is middle-aged and her marriage is dissolving.  A wildlife conservationist, her despair includes the hopelessness of a world with climate change.  She comes to the convent for a place to contemplate her life, to be alone with herself for a weekend to see what the rest of her life will be like.  She doesn't really believe in God and it's strange to be around women whose main focus in life is serving him.

Fast forward a few years and the narrator has returned to the convent, now a full time resident.  She doesn't know that her beliefs have changed but she values the quiet and the slowness of the life there.  But in a place where little occurs, any visitor looms large.  The first is very unwelcome.  An infestation of mice comes to plague the sisters.  Not a few but a tidal wave of mice who eat everything, get in shoes and beds and soil everything they touch.  Then the bones of a former Sister arrive and are kept in the parlour until the convent can get local permission to bury her on the site.  She had gone missing and was presumed murdered.  Instead, she had left and emigrated to the United States.  Accompanying the body is a Sister who the narrator had attended school with.  The woman had been the butt of everyone's jokes and bullying and the narrator still feels guilty that she didn't help her.  

Charlotte Wood is an Australian novelist and this novel is probably her most successful.  It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and also got awards from such publications as the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.  While reading, one contemplates these lives of service and what one is doing oneself to help others.  In a time when organized religion is losing membership, it also emphasizes that there are many ways to be of service in this world.  It also explores the value of examining one's past life and finding ways to atone for times of hurting others.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.