Booker longlist thoughts:
I liked My Friends very much, and found Enlightenment interesting. I am still thinking about Stone Yard Devotional and wondering if I need to reread it, or parts of it again, already. I returned a hardback copy to one library but another library service has bought several copies of the newly out paperback edition, and so I've got a copy waiting at the library.
Here's the review of Stone Yard Devotional I posted on Librarything, hopefully with a few corrections and tweaks:
This strangely beautiful novel is a reflective narrative as a woman looks back on selected points in her earlier life, more than 30 years ago, from a nunnery in rural Australia, near where she grew up, and where she has now come to retreat from the world.
I am not sure what I expected when I started reading, and am not sure I fully understood everything. There is mention of the narrator's husband, Alex - clearly the marriage has come to an end. Originally she comes for a week and stays as a paying guest, but 4 years later she is a permanent resident, an "oblate", not a nun but someone who has committed to living in this community. The community is struggling to find ways to make ends meet and support itself without losing the seclusion, the retreat and the religious nature that are its reasons to exist.
The narrator thinks about the deaths of her parents, first her father and then her mother, well over 30 years ago, on the end of her marriage, on the hurts and the end of friendships caused by her decision to come and live at the nunnery. Then there is unwelcome news that a former resident's body is being repatriated to be buried at the convent, accompanied by the narrator's former classmate.
I am still thinking about this novel a few weeks after reading it, and all the questions it leaves unanswered. It isn't a novel of plot, it is one of thought, memory and reflection, and of a difficult balance between solitude and living in a community.