Karen
In the beginning of this book, an unnamed woman goes to a Catholic retreat center near her home town in Australia, suffering from unresolved grief over her parents' deaths, especially her mother's, as well as grief, guilt, and shame over other events in her life. She seems exhausted. She's not particularly religious, and doesn't at first intend to go to the daily prayers, but then she does go after all. In the next chapter, some time has passed and we find that this woman has come back for the fourth time and this time she has stayed. She has left her husband Alex and all her friends, quit her job working for an endangered species advocacy organization, and taken on the job of cooking and housekeeping for free in exchange for permission to stay at the center.
We never do learn the woman's name or what happened to her marriage. Instead we read her close observations of daily life at the convent and her ruminations on her mother and other people she knows who have died, including a number of suicides. A woman from her past who makes her very uncomfortable appears at the convent, and there is a rat infestation of biblical proportions.
Stone Yard Devotional is not comfortable reading. I stuck with it because the narrator's preoccupations resonated with me, and I found her to be observant and somewhat insightful (if not about herself). I wanted to see if she came to any resolution in her self-exile. In retrospect, I'm glad I read it. More than a week later, I'm still thinking about several aspects of the book--the narrator, why it was written the way it was. The book club I read this for was vehemently divided over whether reading it was worthwhile, though. Reader, beware!
In the beginning of this book, an unnamed woman goes to a Catholic retreat center near her home town in Australia, suffering from unresolved grief over her parents' deaths, especially her mother's, as well as grief, guilt, and shame over other events in her life. She seems exhausted. She's not particularly religious, and doesn't at first intend to go to the daily prayers, but then she does go after all. In the next chapter, some time has passed and we find that this woman has come back for the fourth time and this time she has stayed. She has left her husband Alex and all her friends, quit her job working for an endangered species advocacy organization, and taken on the job of cooking and housekeeping for free in exchange for permission to stay at the center.
We never do learn the woman's name or what happened to her marriage. Instead we read her close observations of daily life at the convent and her ruminations on her mother and other people she knows who have died, including a number of suicides. A woman from her past who makes her very uncomfortable appears at the convent, and there is a rat infestation of biblical proportions.
Stone Yard Devotional is not comfortable reading. I stuck with it because the narrator's preoccupations resonated with me, and I found her to be observant and somewhat insightful (if not about herself). I wanted to see if she came to any resolution in her self-exile. In retrospect, I'm glad I read it. More than a week later, I'm still thinking about several aspects of the book--the narrator, why it was written the way it was. The book club I read this for was vehemently divided over whether reading it was worthwhile, though. Reader, beware!