PRE-ORDER: Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (HC)

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.

REVIEWS

"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

"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

PRODUCT DETAILS
Hardcover Edition
Publisher: Sceptre
ISBN: 978-1399724340
Pages: 320