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'Nobody knows the subterranean lives of families'.

Lying amid the stark, desolate surroundings of Monaro, is a place of quiet stillness: a cloistered community of nuns. Drawn to this austere, tranquility, so near to the town of her childhood, is a woman who has deliberately decided to delete her previous city life: her husband, friends, and job, 'I had a need, an animal need, to find a place I had never been but which was still, in some undeniable way, my home'. Being so near her old childhood home increasingly challenges her memories and beliefs. They erupt and multiply as drastically as the plague of mice invading their home and town, 'The mouse plague is infecting everything now: all sense of smell, of course, but even sound, even memory'.

'Stone Yard Devotional', is a contemplative story related in a series of short paragraphs, filled with reflection and wondering. The reader is never properly introduced to the main character, her name is never given and her past is only revealed in glimpses throughout. There really is no beginning and there is no end. However, the anonymity of the MC allows the reader to read the thoughts as their own. For me, it was the musing that made this story compelling.

I have never read any of Charlotte Wood's previous books, but I did enjoy the desolation, the reflections, and the ruminations in this book. Overall, a compelling, contemporary book.