Author: Charlotte Wood
Published: 2023
Pages: 320
Prize: Shortlist, Man Booker 2024
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In this moving novel a woman leaves her city life to join a remote religious community in the Monaro plains. Despite lacking faith and understanding of prayer, she seeks solace while struggling with her mother’s death. Her secluded life is disrupted by a mouse plague, the return of a deceased sister’s remains, and a troubling visitor. These events prompt deep questions about goodness, forgiveness, and grief. The novel is a reflective exploration of these themes, offering profound emotional insight.
Complexity
CEFR: B2-C1
Plot Complexity: moderate
Language Complexity: moderate
Ideas Complexity: moderate
Blurb
A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be ‘good’, from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.
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. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation.
Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand – then disappeared, presumed murdered.Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished?A meditative and deeply moving novel from one of Australia’s most acclaimed and best loved writers..
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