In 'Stone Yard Devotional,' a woman abandons modern life for a religious community

Summary

NPR's Book of the Day: Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

Release Date: March 3, 2025
Host: Andrew Limbong and Ari Shapiro
Author Featured: Charlotte Wood
Episode Duration: Approximately 9 minutes
Podcast Description: NPR's Book of the Day offers listeners a concise, engaging exploration of noteworthy books across all genres, perfect for busy schedules.

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Episode Overview

In celebration of Women's History Month and International Women's Day, NPR's Book of the Day dedicates an episode to female authors, featuring Charlotte Wood's acclaimed novel, Stone Yard Devotional. The episode delves into the novel's exploration of personal choices, ethical ambiguity, and the tension between engagement and withdrawal from societal issues.

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Introduction to Stone Yard Devotional

Host Andrew Limbong introduces the episode by highlighting that Stone Yard Devotional centers on an unnamed narrator who abandons her modern life in Sydney to join a secluded religious community. The novel grapples with profound questions about personal agency and the moral complexities of choosing isolation over active participation in the world.

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Author Interview: Charlotte Wood with Ari Shapiro

**1. Non-Judgmental Character Portrayal
Charlotte Wood discusses her intentional approach to crafting characters without imposing judgments on their decisions. She emphasizes creating an "ethically gray area" where readers are invited to form their own opinions.

“I was very intent with this book to try not to judge, almost as a kind of technical challenge as a writer to make a book that didn't really tell the reader how to feel about any of this.”
— Charlotte Wood [02:19]

**2. Incorporating Real-World Events: The Mouse Plague
Wood explains the inclusion of a mouse plague in the novel, drawing inspiration from actual events in New South Wales, Australia. This element serves to heighten the narrative's tension and underscore themes of environmental imbalance and unpredictability.

“We are at the front of what climate change is doing. These rolling kind of catastrophes that the fires, the COVID this mouse plague, floods, these things just sort of felt biblical.”
— Charlotte Wood [04:47]

**3. Character Dynamics: Helen Perry’s Role
The conversation shifts to Helen Perry, a "celebrity nun" and activist who contrasts sharply with the novel's contemplative narrator. Wood describes Helen as a disruptive force within the convent, bringing external energy and confronting the community's chosen isolation.

“She brings with her all the kind of energy and angst about the world that these other women have deliberately left behind. So she's a very disturbing presence in this place.”
— Charlotte Wood [06:35]

**4. Personal Reflections: Engagement vs. Withdrawal
Wood shares her internal struggle between staying engaged with the world's issues and the desire to withdraw for personal well-being. She reflects on the ethical implications of both choices, mirroring her protagonist's journey.

“How much should I be in the world? How much should I be out of the world? And my kind of instinct is to stay out of the world as much as I can... how much to stay in, how much to retreat, at what point is it ethical to do either?”
— Charlotte Wood [07:52]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• On Non-Judgmental Storytelling:
  “I was very intent with this book to try not to judge... [02:19]”

• On Environmental Themes:
  “These rolling kind of catastrophes... just sort of felt biblical.” [04:47]

• On Ethical Dilemmas:
  “How much should I be in the world? How much should I be out of the world?” [07:52]

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Key Themes and Insights

1. Choice and Consequence:
   The novel examines the ramifications of leaving one's established life for a life of religious seclusion, prompting readers to contemplate the costs and benefits of such a decision.

2. Ethical Ambiguity:
   By avoiding clear moral judgments, Wood creates a space where the protagonist's actions are open to interpretation, reflecting the complex nature of real-life decisions.

3. Environmental Catastrophe as a Literary Device:
   The mouse plague serves as a metaphor for larger environmental crises, linking personal narratives to global issues like climate change.

4. Contrasting Characters:
   The introduction of Helen Perry highlights the tension between action-oriented activism and contemplative withdrawal, offering a multifaceted look at how individuals engage with societal problems.

5. Personal vs. Collective Responsibility:
   Wood's reflections reveal a deeper inquiry into the balance between personal well-being and societal obligations, a central theme in both her life and her writing.

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Conclusion

Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional presents a nuanced exploration of personal choice, ethical complexity, and environmental challenges within a religious secluded setting. Through her conversation with NPR's Ari Shapiro, Wood elucidates her method of creating morally ambiguous characters and weaving real-world issues into her narrative fabric. This episode of NPR's Book of the Day not only highlights the literary merits of Wood's work but also invites listeners to engage with the profound questions it raises about involvement, isolation, and the human condition.

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For those seeking a thought-provoking read that delves deep into the intricacies of personal and ethical dilemmas, Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional comes highly recommended. Tune into NPR's Book of the Day for more insights into today's most compelling literature.

Transcript

[Andrew Limbong]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. March is Women's History Month and this Saturday is International Women's Day. So to honor that, this week we're having all women writers on the pod. Today we're talking to Charlotte Wood, whose new novel Stone Yard Devotional is about a narrator who chooses to leave everything and join a closed off religious community. It's a book about choices. And in this interview with NPR's Ari Shapiro, Wood talks about not judging her character's choices, which she says is technically hard to do. And I think you've seen it in fiction, right? You can often tell when a writer feels a certain way about a character. The approach Wood takes is to have her characters act in that ethically gray area where it's hard to cast judgment in the first place. More up ahead.

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[Ari Shapiro]

If you've ever felt the urge to tune out current events, to turn your back on the world and all of its troubles, then you have something in common with the unnamed narrator of the new novel Stonyard Devotional. She gives in to that urge, abandons her modern life in Sydney and retreats to a convent. Soon, disruptions arrive. Stonyard Devotional was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and I asked the author Charlotte Wood to begin by reading a passage where the narrator contemplates the choice she made.

[Charlotte Wood]

You do not announce on Facebook that you, an atheist, are leaving your job and your home and your husband to join a cloistered religious community. I mean, you could and it might be a better way than I chose, which was not to announce anything to anyone. People were wounded, very wounded. They told me so in the letters that came for a time in a steady river to let me know of the hurt and damage I had caused by my disappearance, how much it was still rippling.

[Ari Shapiro]

Do you judge your narrator for renouncing the world and removing herself from it? Do you envy her? How do you feel about that decision?

[Charlotte Wood]

I mean, I was very intent with this book to try not to judge, almost as a kind of technical challenge as a writer to make a book that didn't really tell the reader how to feel about any of this. And really it's because I still don't know how to feel about this. The the narrator is kind of moving up and down sort of ethically along a spectrum between two sort of mantras that she talks about when she first goes there. And the first one is action is the antidote to despair. And she has always believed that. It's something I have always believed. But she has hit a wall on that belief. She comes across these women and first of all, she thinks they're kind of a bit, kind of pathetic really. And she thinks, what are they doing here? They're not doing anything out in the world. This is, you know, nice for them, but what are they achieving? And yet then she sort of, it dawns on her that maybe by doing nothing in the world, they're actually causing less harm than she herself has caused, even with all her well intentioned activism.

[Ari Shapiro]

So you place her in this quiet, contemplative context. And then the disruptions arrive and there are three big ones. One is a plague of mice. And the Guardian newspaper said there are images in this section that would make Stephen King's hair stand on end. I have to agree. In real life, farms in New South Wales, Australia had a horrific plague of mice a few years ago. Why did you weave this into the book?

[Charlotte Wood]

Well, look, partly because it was happening while I was writing the book and it was, you know, it wasn't happening in my house because I live in the inner city, but it was happening out in the countryside. And to be honest, the real reason that I started putting it in the book was I spoke to my friend who lives on a farm and this was happening to her. And she said, oh my God, last night you would not believe what happened. We were all asleep and then we heard the piano playing in the night. And I'd made the same noise that you just made. And to me that image seems so chilling, so strange, so kind of frightening. That wasn't about, you know, it was about this presence. Anyway, I thought, I can't just leave that lying there.

[Ari Shapiro]

You know, it's a gift to a novelist.

[Charlotte Wood]

It's a gift. So I put it in and then I was like, okay, I guess I've got a mouse plague now. And it's one of those things that happens when nature is out of balance. The seasons have changed. There's no denying that in Australia we are at the very. I mean, I may be wrong, but it feels like we are at the front of what climate change is doing. These rolling kind of catastrophes that the fires, the COVID this mouse plague, floods, these things just sort of felt biblical, to be honest.

[Ari Shapiro]

Yeah, I was gonna say the mouse plague is so useful. I don't wanna say it's great, but it is at the same time hyperrealistic. And it is biblical, and it is about climate change, and it is incomprehensible, even as it is something that people you knew were actively living through in the moment. Like it does all of these seemingly contradictory things simultaneously.

[Charlotte Wood]

Mm. Yeah. It's one of those things, you know, as a. As an artist, as a novelist, you sort of land on something and your conscious mind doesn't really understand why. You just know that that's gotta go in. But later I understood that, as you just said, it's all articulated beautifully, the kind of the narrative purpose of it, but also that it was just real.

[Ari Shapiro]

I want to ask you about another character in the book named Helen Perry, because she is kind of the opposite of your narrator in many ways. She is a celebrity nun, a committed activist. She arrives at the convent and she is on zoom meetings and phone calls about human trafficking and deforestation. And she seems like a character who could have been both very fun to write and also who could easily take over a narrative. So how did you wrangle her?

[Charlotte Wood]

Yeah, I was interested, you know, when I was first thinking about nuns and realizing, of course, very quickly that, surprise, surprise, there's a great variety. And, you know, they're all different kinds of women who live different kinds of lives. Even as a nun, I was really interested in. There are these women around the world. They're kind of. You know, I think of them as rogue operators who are fully political, very, very active, very vocal. They're troublemakers. They speak truth to power and dictators. So I was sort of interested that that is such the opposite life of this cloistered, silent retreat life. And bringing those two things together really interested me, because when Helen Parry arrives, she brings with her all the kind of energy and angst about the world that these other women have deliberately left behind. So she's very disturbing presence in this place.

[Ari Shapiro]

I know that you don't want to judge your characters and that you deliberately aim not to judge your characters, but when you have set up these polarities of engagement versus withdrawal or action versus do no harm, where do you place yourself on that continuum?

[Charlotte Wood]

Well, I place myself running up and down that path. And it's something that has really preoccupied me as a writer, that the question of how much should I be in the world? How much should I be out of the world? And my kind of instinct is to stay out of the world as much as I can. I can't bear it. I'm going to, just because my life is fine, you know, I can turn away from it. I'm a middle class white woman. I can live a very nice life ignoring politics, and yet I don't think that's a moral way to proceed. So, you know, how, how much to stay in, how much to retreat, at what point is it ethical to do either? You know, those questions are really present for me, have always been present for me, but they seem more and more urgent.

[Ari Shapiro]

Charlotte Wood's latest novel is called Stone Yard Devotional. Thank you so much for talking with us about it.

[Charlotte Wood]

I've loved it. Thank you, Ari.

[Scott Detrow]

Hey, it's Scott Detrow, the host of Trump's Terms, a podcast where we bring you short, focused episodes about the 47th president and the biggest changes he is trying to make. A lot of those changes will be front and center during his address to a joint session of Congress on March 4th. In the days after, we will bring you stories not just about what he said, but about what is actually happening and what isn't happening. Listen to Trump's Terms from npr.