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This story of a woman retreating from the world to a convent in New South Wales considers guilt, forgiveness and human connectionWhat are we going to do about global heating, about mass extinction, about our rivers? What ability do we have to change things, now that power lies mostly in the hands of unaccountable corporations and shameless demagogues? Is there even any point in trying? The narrator of Stone Yard Devotional, who has been working in species conservation, chooses that most seductive solution – despair. She leaves her life and marriage in Sydney and checks into the retreat house of an enclosed convent on the Monaro Plains in New South Wales. And retreat she certainly does. For a while she just lies on the floor. Later, she joins in with the life of the convent – preparing food, cleaning, turning up to mass and the hours of office. There’s no great conversion moment, no sense of redemption, just some women getting on with things. This probably does not sound like the most spine-tingling premise for a book, but I have rarely been so absorbed, so persuaded by a novel. Also, I haven’t yet mentioned the mice.There is a tradition of novelists using the pressure-cooker environment of a convent for thought experiments or satire. Rumer Godden took on the contradictions of colonialism in Black Narcissus. Muriel Spark did Watergate in habits for The Abbess of Crewe. But the nuns at Stone Yard are too busy keeping everything spruce and orderly to go in for wire taps or erotic shenanigans. The pressure here comes from outside, in the shape of three arrivals. First come the mortal remains of Sister Jenny, a member of the order who was murdered in Thailand years before. A sudden flood has flushed her bones from their hiding place and now they are to be buried in the mother house. The nuns keep vigil while struggling with feelings of loss and anger. Continue reading...