The narrator\u2019s initial reasons for visiting the abbey are vague: She\u2019s tired; she wants to escape; her marriage is falling apart; she\u2019s still grieving her parents, dead for more than 35 years; she\u2019s disillusioned with her work in the environmental conservation movement. The predictability of the nuns\u2019 rituals turns out to be profoundly restorative. When Part II opens, the narrator has been at the abbey for four years. No one can make sense of her decision\u2014not her husband, not her friends, not her colleagues who see her abdication as a lack of faith in their mission, and least of all the narrator herself, a self-described atheist, who explains, \u201cI came back here one last time and then just\u2026didn\u2019t go home.\u201d A plague of mice\u2014an effect of climate change\u2014the complicated logistics of trying to bring home the body of a murdered nun in the early days of the pandemic, and the return of a problematic figure from the narrator\u2019s past nudge the plot forward, but what\u2019s most gripping about the book isn\u2019t what happens but rather the narrator\u2019s quiet meditation on cruelty and kindness, love and forgiveness, our petty irritations with others and the process of allowing them to drift away. The \u201cstone yard\u201d in the title of Wood\u2019s novel is the name of a neighbor\u2019s sheep paddock. Devotion means love or loyalty; a devotional is a short worship service. Wood threads a contemplative path for believers and nonbelievers alike. Reading her prose\u2014sanded to deceptive simplicity\u2014feels like spending time with a dear friend. What if attentiveness and \u201chabitual kindness,\u201d the narrator seems to ask, are bedrocks of a moral life?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The narrator\u2019s initial reasons for visiting the abbey are vague: She\u2019s tired; she wants to escape; her marriage is falling apart; she\u2019s still grieving her parents, dead for more than 35 years; she\u2019s disillusioned with her work in the environmental conservation movement. The predictability of the nuns\u2019 rituals turns out to be profoundly restorative. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}