Charlotte Wood on contemplating life’s big questions in ’Stone Yard Devotional’

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations: a terrible mouse plague, the return of the skeletal remains of a sister, presumed murdered, who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand, and a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Charlotte Wood about how she came to choose a nameless narrator as her storyteller, why the Monaro plains hold such meaning for her, and the benefits of writing someone else's memoir.