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Stone Yard Devotional
Charlotte Wood
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Description for Stone Yard Devotional
Hardcover.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024: THE NEW NOVEL BY THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE WEEKEND
A Guardian Book of the Summer 2024
A Book of the Year for the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award
Shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the ABIA Award for Literary Fiction
Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award
'A beautiful, mature work that does not flinch from life'
SUNDAY TIMES
'A book about what it means to be good: simply and with great humility, it asks ... Read morethe big questions, leaving the reader feeling kinder, more brave, enlarged'
ANNE ENRIGHT, author of The Wren, The Wren
'I have rarely been so absorbed by a novel . . . A powerful, generous book'
GUARDIAN
'Beautiful, strange and otherworldly'
PAULA HAWKINS, bestselling author of A Slow Fire Burning
'It extends and deepens Wood's already remarkable achievements as a novelist in powerful and often profound ways'
SATURDAY PAPER
'Both profound and addictively entertaining. I loved it'
CLARE CHAMBERS, bestselling author of Small Pleasures
'Extraordinary . . . a stunning work of fiction from a major writer who keeps getting better'
AUSTRALIAN
'Remarkable . . . I'm still trying to figure out how she pulled it off. The best thing she's done'
TIM WINTON, author of The Shepherd's Hut
'No words can quite convey how much I loved this book'
KAREN JOY FOWLER, author of Booth
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 the Australian outback. 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 signalling 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.
PRAISE FOR CHARLOTTE WOOD'S THE WEEKEND
A Sunday Times 'Best Book for Summer 2021'
A Times, Observer, Independent, Daily Express and Good Housekeeping Book of the Year
'So great I am struggling to find the words to do it justice . . . Wood is an agonisingly gifted writer. I am now going to read all her other books'
MARIAN KEYES
'A rare pleasure'
SUNDAY TIMES
'A perfect, funny, insightful novel about women, friendship and ageing'
NINA STIBBE
'Glorious . . . Charlotte Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout'
GUARDIAN
'Riveting'
ELIZABETH DAY
'Triumphantly brings to life the honest inner lives of women'
INDEPENDENT
'A lovely, lively, intelligent, funny book'
TESSA HADLEY Show Less
Product Details
Place of Publication
, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days
About Charlotte Wood
Charlotte Wood is the author of seven novels and three books of non-fiction. Her novel The Natural Way of Things won the 2016 Stella Prize, the Indie Book of the Year and Novel of the Year Awards, and was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction. Her next novel, The Weekend, was an international bestseller and was ... Read moreshortlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize, the Prime Minister's Literary Award and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. In 2019 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and named one of the Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence. Her features and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Literary Hub and Sydney Morning Herald, among others. Charlotte lives in Sydney with her husband. Show Less
Reviews for Stone Yard Devotional
I have rarely been so absorbed, so persuaded by a novel . . . Wood is a writer of the most intense attention. Everything here - the way mice move, the way two women pass each other a confiding look, the way a hero can love the world but also be brusque and inconsiderate to those around them - it ... Read moreall rings true. It's the story of a small group of people in a tiny town, but its resonance is global. This is a powerful, generous book
Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Guardian
Australian writer Charlotte Wood does for mice in her seventh novel what Alfred Hitchcock did for birds . . . Wood has said that she wanted to write about forgiveness, but there is little here by way of comfort. What the novel does instead is to force you to recognise your deepest fears about decay, extinction and suffering. It's a beautiful, mature work that does not flinch from life
Johanna Thomas-Corr
Sunday Times
Stone Yard Devotional is a book about what it means to be good: simply and with great humility, it asks the big questions, leaving the reader feeling kinder, more brave, enlarged
Anne Enright, author of THE WREN, THE WREN A beautiful and masterful book especially for its ability to dwell within the confusion and complexity of all that it is questioning, and for all of its quiet force
Guardian
Wood's sentences are cool and carefully balanced, often working harder than they let on . . . Stone Yard Devotional is all the more accomplished for resisting neat conclusions, and recognising that even the examined life sits only 'on the edge of comprehension'. Wood may not be the first artist to embrace uncertainties, mysteries and doubts, but at its best her novel does it beautifully
Sunday Telegraph
Beautiful writing: I loved The Weekend by the same author and this has a similar elegant style
Joanne Finney
Good Housekeeping
A slim novel which tackles weighty themes - guilt, loss, forgiveness - and manages to be both profound and addictively entertaining. I loved it
Clare Chambers, bestselling author of SMALL PLEASURES Quiet but weighty, Stone Yard Devotional is all about the complicated task of loving the world and its creatures. No words can quite convey how much I loved this book. I am just so happy to have read it
Karen Joy Fowler, author of BOOTH Beautiful, strange and otherworldly, Charlotte Wood's latest novel is an absorbing mediation on grief, forgiveness and our relationship to the natural world
Paula Hawkins, no. 1 bestselling author of A SLOW FIRE BURNING A slender novel which carries a weighty punch. So beautifully written, at times it felt like reading a lament on grief, guilt and responsibility. And it asks the most dangerous question of all: if you reduce a life down to its bare bones, what are you left with? Of what will you feel proud? Moving, searing and urgent, this book is stunning
Araminta Hall, author of ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS Intelligent and nourishing, Stone Yard Devotional shows us the mysteries of human relationships, asking who can and should bestow forgiveness. This novel is subtly powerful and utterly engrossing
Claire Fuller, author of UNSETTLED GROUND Remarkable - I'm still trying to figure out how she pulled it off. The best thing she's done
Tim Winton, Books of the Year
Sydney Morning Herald
Magnificent and radical . . . It gripped me from the opening line to the very last
Age
A quiet, calm, very personal book at a time when we are all so overwhelmed with everything happening around us
Elke Heidenreich
Spiegel
Wood writes not only grippingly but in a lovingly ironic way about everything the monastery heroine experiences - and it's more than you'd expect
Flow
Mesmeric
Hannah Kent, Books of the Year
Sydney Morning Herald
It's possible that some readers regarded Charlotte Wood's 2016 Stella Prize-winning The Natural Way of Things as the pinnacle of her writing career, but as it happens Wood was just getting warmed up . . . Wood's use of first person is reminiscent of Elizabeth Strout's Lucy novels; even the episodic structure seems to take inspiration from those books. But there are also echoes of Marilynne Robinson in that the narrator's self-scrutiny is involved in the question of what it means to live a moral life . . . In this extraordinary novel, everything resonates and becomes meaningful . . . It's difficult to understate the risks Wood has taken in constructing this book out of apparently minor events. But Stone Yard Devotional is a stunning work of fiction from a major writer who keeps getting better
Australian
A book that extends and deepens Wood's already remarkable achievements as a novelist in powerful and often profound ways . . . It is a mark of Wood's sophistication as a writer that the novel does not attempt to resolve these contradictions. Instead it suggest that goodness is fraught and imperfect and that the bonds of love and obligation, kindness and cruelty that bind us to one another are written deep in our bodies, shaping us in ways we cannot ever fully escape or understand
Saturday Paper
Wood's generous capacity for sustained attention is a gift to readers . . . Stone Yard Devotional invites the kind of contemplation and pause that is rare in a world of constant distraction. Its slow pace is counterbalanced by the shafts of meaning that fall right through Wood's lucid prose. Its stillness comes to feel less like a retreat and more like a radical practice, the soul-work of holding oneself accountable. If there is peace to be found here, it is hard won
Jennifer Mills
Australian Book Review
PRAISE FOR CHARLOTTE WOOD'S THE WEEKEND A Sunday Times 'Best books for summer 2021' | A Times, Guardian and Daily Mail paperback pick | A Times, Observer, Independent, Daily Express and Good Housekeeping book of the year 'The Weekend is so great I am struggling to find the words to do it justice' Marian Keyes 'A lovely, lively, intelligent, funny book' Tessa Hadley 'A rare pleasure' Sunday Times 'Glorious... Charlotte Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout' Guardian 'These women are so alive on the page, it is impossible not to feel a kinship and intimacy with each of them' Daily Express A brilliant premise . . . wry, unusual and beautifully written
Daily Mail
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