Stone Yard Devotional

This slim Australian novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and has been often described as one that "sounds quiet but reads as anything but." I do love a deceptively quiet novel, so I tried this on audio (as narrated by Ailsa Piper). This is the story of a Sydney woman who gives in to something akin to despair and leaves her work and her marriage to take up residence at a convent far from home, on the Monaro Plains of New South Wales. After the early days of her arrival, during which she spends many hours literally lying on the floor, she throws herself into the quotidian tasks and peculiar gossip of convent life. But a series of three arrivals disrupts our narrator's piece and calls her to contemplate her past and future life—the mortal remains of departed Sister Jenny, a visit from a climate activist named Helen who our narrator knew as a child, and an overwhelming invasion of mice (the descriptions of which were literally jaw-dropping for me while reading). There's not a clear plot exactly, which I know will be off-putting to some readers, but if you like the sound of a contemplative book about quietly blowing up your whole life, this might be for you.