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Five Brilliant stars for Charlotte Wood and although I haven't yet read the other Booker nominees, I would love this one to win. She writes about many subjects that are close to my range of interests: the mother who composts everything - I have one of those.

My mother said that anything that had once been alive should go back into the soil. Food scraps went into the compost, of course, including meat and bones, despite the general advice against this. Paper, torn into strips to allow air and microbes to move freely through. She would cut old pure cotton or silk or woollen clothes into small shreds and compost them too. Fish bones and flesh. Linen tea towels. She reluctantly left out larger pieces of wood, but longed for a woodchipper. She left cane furniture to rot and then buried it. She quoted a Buckingham Palace gardener she had once seen on television, who added leather boots to his compost bin. All that was needed was time, and nature.
Anything that had lived could make itself useful, become nourishment in death, my mother said.

I never knew anyone else who had her reverence for the earth itself.

From my earliest memories I remember my mother saving scraps for the compost- I know she put in bones and materials, paper and cardboard. From my earliest years I've know that you can't have too many "greens" or your compost will stink.

Back to Charlotte Wood - Yes, she reminds me quite a bit of Alice Munro, and her stories set in those isolated prairie towns. Munro's townsfolk are similar to the ones described in our narrator's home-town near the Monaro plains of South West Australia. Wood supplies hardly any description of this isolated, dry land and again I think this is a decision to avoid any type of romanticism - although I do love Gretel Erhlich's work - a writer who is able to viscerally put the high plains of Montana and Wyoming onto paper. I think Wood eschews description in order to focus exclusively on how her humans interact with the natural world. At the abbey there is an ugly, bewildering, destructive plague of mice. Although I might note here that her squeamish levels are quite low. As a cat and dog owner I've unfortunately had to deal with rather a large number of corpses. Out in the wilds of Portugal my two dogs have caught and broken the necks of several mongoose. The screams of an animal fighting for its life are not something you forget quickly - or even when you view its mangled body, can you soothe yourself that it was killed quickly. I would guess that Wood has lived primarily in a city.

On the other-hand her analyses of the human necessity for Forgiveness are some of the best I've ever read; both in a formal capacity, as revealed by the sisters, members of the Catholic faith, with whom our narrator lives. She recounts incidents from her own life in a less formal manner. There is an unpleasant incidence of bullying in school, and another where she fails to acknowledge some Vietnamese refugees, whom she had met earlier. The narrator's stories remind us that to forgive or not is part of everyone's life and that it can become a difficult question when we consider people who have harmed us. Wood presents some fairly basic concepts but then develops this theme of forgiveness in many more complex scenarios; which certainly caused me to reflect on my own life and the relationships I have.

I've spent some considerable time thinking about a particular person, and I've long since come to the conclusion that although I understand his behaviour I'm not sure whether I can ever forgive his refusal to have any interaction with me. There are consequences for decisions made. Wood relates the story of a woman who is dying; the narrator's friend, Beth has neither the energy or time to give to a person from her past. This person has embarked on a 12-step program, and wants to connect with her. Our narrator approved and understood her friend's decision, but sometimes Wood underestimates, I think the life-experience and knowledge of some of her readers.

On the whole, I forgive her because of her insights into how people either deal or don't deal with the subject of death; how they grieve over loved ones. There are several sections where the narrator recounts the death of her mother; she talks at some length about the necessity of being practical, and of being present with people who are dying. These sections Wood handles with supreme clarity and sense. She writes with many declarative sentences, in a simple style and thus she asks us to consider our own most repressed fears.

Only recently, for example have I acknowledged how much I hate to stay in any person's home other than my own - and I recognise this is due to some unpleasant experiences earlier in my life. We bury those feelings of fear. This is the common way of dealing with so much that is out of our control.

Wood clarifies that most people hide the truth; the essential truth about themselves from themselves. In the character of Helen Parry she has created a rare person who is able to acknowledge, confront, and then forgive the harm that has been done to her. The narrator and the character of Helen Parry are possibly two parts of the same person - our author - I suspect, because these two characters have been created with such authenticity.

Loved it, loved it, loved it. I've ordered The Weekend, which I understand is something quite different from Stone Yard Devotional, but I'm happy to read anything by this wonderful writer. She reminds me of Helen Garner, who is another favourite of mine.

The Spare Room - Helen Garner - she writes about living and dying with cancer.
The Solace of Open Spaces Gretel Ehrlich - evocative descriptions of wild places.
The Progress of Love - Alice Munro - families, small towns.