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.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post ...

Stone Yard Devotional is a very small story by design. The protagonist is a woman who despite a consistent atheism choses to retreat from the world by becoming part of a small, poor monastery. The novel's perspective stays focused on this small stage, watching as the nuns deal with an infestation of mice, the general maintenance of the grounds, and the plight of the return of a nun's body from another country. For some of NUBClub, this was off-putting, both because not much happens during the story and because the protagonist's choice to retreat from the world when she was actively doing good through work and charity seemed selfish and actively worsening the world. But for those of us that liked Wood's novel, all of this was the point. Suicide, both literally and metaphorical, surrounds the novel and questions of what removal from the world means. The protagonist is contrasted with a more politically active character who is fighting for the body's return so we are never without a foil of what other kinds of good work could be done. At the same time, the violence of the world is both sharp (as shown in the how the nun was murdered for her work outside) and inescapable (as manifested in the apocalyptic mouse infestation). At the same time, Woods interrogates the idea of redemption as the nuns live with their small dramas and irritations. Much of the protagonist's interior life is focused on the minor sins of her past and her journey to forgiveness is not a matter of grand words or gestures but slow and thankless work. Despite how small story is, there's a darkness and surprisingly rigorous struggle at the heart of the novel. None of us had any faults with Woods's writing and we all found moments of beautiful prose. But whether or not this novel appeals to you depends on how much you're good with a story so deliberately isolated. If you're willing to do the work, Woods has provided a subtle novel of complex beauty.