Stone Yard Devotional

Get in the xigxag app
This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.
Pre-order Buy Now £{{ price }}
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

The new novel by Charlotte Wood, the Stella Prize-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

A fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and the complicated beauty of female friendship.

Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, finding solace 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.

As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of her new life, she ruminates on her childhood in the nearby town, turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget.

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.

'Both profound and addictively entertaining. I loved it'
CLARE CHAMBERS, bestselling author of Small Pleasures

'Beautiful, strange and otherworldly'
PAULA HAWKINS, bestselling author of A Slow Fire Burning

'Subtly powerful and utterly engrossing'
CLAIRE FULLER, bestselling author of Unsettled Ground

(P) 2023 Allen & Unwin

Critics Review

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

More from the same

Author

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.