Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Woods

A 2024 Booker Longlist Review by Alison Manley

Editor’s note: For many years, Alison Manley has attempted to read all the books on the Booker Prize longlist. She posts her reviews on her Instagram site and has kindly permitted us to repost them here at TSR. Here is the first!

In Stone Yard Devotional, a woman retreats to a guesthouse at an abbey as her marriage crumbles and ends up going to stay. Despite her atheism, she falls into the monastic life - following the patterns, contributing to the abbey, and living an isolated life.

During the pandemic, the abbey is afflicted by a plague of mice. The bones of a nun who had left them were found in Thailand and returned to the abbey. And the nun’s bones are accompanied by Helen Parry, a spectre from the narrator’s past.

This is a contemplative novel. The narrator has chosen to retreat from the world, but it comes back - and she finds herself sifting through memories as she battles mice. Being a cultural Catholic myself, I love a novel in which a religiously ambivalent narrator moves through the ceremonies and services because it mimics how I felt when I was practicing. What is this? Why are we doing it? Does it even matter if it brings comfort? The narrator is both apart and a part of the abbey.

I loved this book. It’s another quiet plotless narrative, so while it suits me perfectly, I don’t think it has enough spark to win the Booker. It is beautiful and petty and full of grief. I wouldn’t be mad about it being on the shortlist, but like so many of the ones I’ve read already, I’m less excited than I want to be.

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About the Author

Charlotte Wood has been described as one of Australia's most original and provocative writers. She is the author of six novels and two books of non-fiction. Her latest novel, The Natural Way of Things, won the 2016 Stella Prize, the 2016 Indie Book of the Year and Novel of the Year, was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, and has been published throughout Europe, the UK and North America.

About the Reviewer

Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow. Her personal Substack is Subject Headings.

Book Details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sceptre (March 7 2024)

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1399724347

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1399724340