Stone Yard Devotional: A Novel

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. "Stone Yard Devotional is as extraordinary as you´ve heard." -The Washington Post "An exquisite, wrenching novel of leaving your life behind." -New York Times Book Review "Meditative (but by no means uneventful)." -New York Times "Riveting prose about how humans beat back despair."-Los Angeles Times 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.