Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional and the Natural Way of Life: Trauma, Age and Quietude

This article is devoted to Charlotte Wood’s novel Stone Yard Devotional that was published in 2023 and has now been short-listed for the Booker Prize Award. It speaks about a life on the isolated Monaro planes in Australia and the necessity of solitude. It is a testimony on how unresolved trauma can manifest in our lives and how agency is found in extreme acts of courage that defy normativity. Through the perspective of a middle-aged narrator, human relationships to nature, to oneself and to others are reviewed and ageing is held as life’s productive category.