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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.
About the Book
Publisher’s Description:
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR
A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR
A LOS ANGELES TIMES TOP FIFTEEN BOOK OF THE YEAR
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.
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.
Other books in the "Quick Lit December 2025"
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