WWhat are we going to do about global warming, mass extinctions, and rivers? What ability do we have to change things now that so much of the power is in the hands of unaccountable corporations and shameless demagogues? Is there any point in trying it? The narrator of The Stone Yard Devotional, who has worked to protect a species, chooses the most seductive solution: despair. She leaves her life in Sydney and her marriage and checks into a closed monastic retreat on the Monaro Plains in New South Wales. And she does retreat. For a while she just lies on the floor. She then participates in the life of the convent, including preparing meals, cleaning, attending Mass, and office hours. There’s no great moment of conversion or sense of redemption, just some women making things work. This may not be the most spine-chilling premise for a book, but I’ve rarely been so hooked and persuaded by a novel. Also, I haven’t mentioned rats yet.
There is a tradition of novelists using the pressure-cooker environment of monasteries for thought experiments and satire. Rumer Godden takes on the contradictions of colonialism in Black Narcissus. Muriel Spark played Watergate in The Habit of Abbot of Crewe. But the Stoneyard nuns are too busy keeping everything in order to engage in eavesdropping and erotic shenanigans. Here, pressure is applied from the outside in the form of the arrival of three players. First, the body of Sister Jenny, a member of the cult who was murdered in Thailand many years ago, arrives. Due to a sudden flood, her bones were washed away from her hiding place and will now be buried in her mother’s house. The nuns remain vigilant despite suffering loss and anger.
The remains are accompanied by their most famous sister, a climate change activist named Helen Parry, whose presence draws into the convent all the noise of the world that the narrator wishes to leave behind. The narrator knew Parry in her childhood, when they went to school together. She had seen herself being severely bullied, and she was racked with guilt for participating in it. However, adult Parry is invincible, she is confident in herself and effective. A heartbroken child turned into a full-throated activist. She didn’t even have friends when she was young, and now she doesn’t need any form of affirmation. Parry’s portrait alone is worth reading this book.
Climate change is imposed on the nuns not only by the news on Parry’s radio, but also by the plague of rats that swarm the convent in terrifying numbers after a drought in the north. The blinds looked like they were swaying in the wind, but they were actually covered. Their noise is unavoidable. A mechanical excavator is needed to create a hole large enough to contain the body. This section contains hair-raising images of Stephen King. But while horror stories depict some sort of societal collapse and heroic deeds, the nuns simply continue to do their best to stem the tide and keep things clean.
The irony of the narrator turning to a convent in despair is that for Catholics, despair is an unpardonable sin. In interviews, Wood refers to these three events – the bones, the mouse, and Parry’s return – as “visits,” as if they were trials, like desert temptations. These tests open up all sorts of possibilities. How we can live with the damage we have done, how there is solace and even meaning in service and obedience, how we can still be useful even when we are broken. It’s about Noka.
Simone Weil said, “Paying attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Wood is the author who is attracting the most attention. Everything here, the way the mouse moves, the way the two women exchange trusting looks, the way the protagonist loves the world but is surly and indifferent to those around her, everything seems real. It sounds like This is the story of a few people in a small town, but its repercussions are felt all over the world. This is a powerful and generous book.
