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Insomnia is something that comes and goes in my life, but it has been pretty constant in the last few months. I mention this for two reasons. First, my insomnia allowed me to finish this book at about 3 am, and I have had a good deal of time to think about this since my exhausted brain is doing a piss-poor job of focusing on work. Second, the reasons for my insomnia are feelings of grief and helplessness stemming from both the end of the world as I have known it and from anniversaries of the deaths of my parents and of a friend who I considered my soulmate. It is that sense of grief and hopelessness stemming both from the early loss of her parents and a close friend, and the death of the planet, that guide our narrator in Stone Yard Devotional. I think the narrator is in late middle age (so her parents' deaths are long past) but if her actual age is given I missed it. The festering grief and emptiness lead the narrator to abandon her home, job in environmental activism, marriage, and friends to join a convent, notwithstanding the fact that she does not believe in God.

The decampment to the nunnery allows a lot of time for reflection on past actions that evoke feelings of regret and the need to atone. Not one of her constant ruminations touch on contentment, happiness, joy, or even equanimity. I had a disconnect with that. I don't think we are supposed to attribute all of the choices and actions (or inactions) presented to clinical depression. It, therefore, seemed odd to me that there were no pleasant thoughts. She relates tales of her iconoclastic and supportive mother and loving father, which are nice things, but she shares no pleasant contact with them. She thinks about how her mother's environmentalism and rejection of church made others think her family was weird and should be avoided. She recalls that her mother's commitment and goodness made her lie so her parents would not be disappointed in her choices. She makes clear how great a loss her parents' early deaths were. She relates nothing of fun or comfort or wonder in those relationships. It is all sadness and anxiety. Our narrator has a sly sense of humor that peeks out of the gloom on occasion, but it is not a happy humor. There is no generosity in it. This is humor borne of frustration, depression, and disappointment. This is humor as trauma response.

The action in the book, if we can call it action. mostly comes from climate change and political strife. The most notable event is the onslaught of heavy rains and high temperatures that lead to a spectacular rodent infestation. They eat everything in the convent, destroying the oven's insulation and wiring, the piano, the window screens. They even eat the songbirds and the chickens who supply the sisters with eggs (and eventually they gnaw on one another.) Their sounds and their smells pervade everything. For a person like me with a rodent-phobia this was horrifying (and did not help with my insomnia) but I don't think this is intended as horror. At the same time they are battling the mice of the apocalypse the sisters are separated from their ties to the outside world by Covid. Another aggravating event, the sisters receive the body of a radical nun who had disappeared in Thailand years ago. The nun was running a women's shelter and was hated there because abusing women was a cultural norm and she was imposing Western values. When at the convent, this sister had difficult relationships, but the sisters are committed to burying her on the grounds despite that not being legal. To add insult to injury the body comes accompanied by an activist who turns out to be a former classmate of the narrator. The activist was the target of bullying and physical abuse at the hands of her classmates (including the narrator) which triggers further feelings of pain and regret and retreat.

So there is a lot of pain and regret and retreat here, but there are also moving observations on forgiveness and focus and devotion (not necessarily to God.) I cannot say I related to the narrator, whose answer to her pain seems to be to make herself as small as humanly possible without actually dying, to have no impact of any sort on anything. As I mentioned at the top of this magnum opus I empathize with her grief over her losses, but her response feels selfish to me and her refusal to seek a way out is mystifying. This is all austere and meditative, a quiet celebration of capitulation. The author's keen insight and beautiful writing is notable, and I am sure my failure to understand the narrator is user error. I am sure other readers will feel differently.

If you are looking for resolution, you won't find any here. The best you get is a moment or two of respite. I don't need much in the way of resolution in my reading. The world doesn't tie things up in my experience, and I like stories that acknowledge that. I could have used some movement, though. I wanted the narrator to find some small sense of purpose or pleasure, or to choose to end her life. This is one I admired more than I liked. I do not regret the read, it gave me a lot to think about and, again, it is beautifully written. Ultimately though it was unsatisfying for me. I would go with a 3.5 if I could. Rounding up to 4 because I think the book was fully realized and beautifully crafted.