Charlotte Wood’s beautifully spare Stone Yard Devotional makes 2024 Booker Prize shortlist

No Australian woman has ever won the Booker Prize but Sydney’s Charlotte Wood is now on the shortlist.

Charlotte Wood is the first Australian to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize since Richard Flanagan won in 2014. Picture: Henry Simmons

Sydney writer Charlotte Wood has made the shortlist for 2024 Booker Prize, which no Australian woman has ever won.

Wood’s novel, Stone Yard Devotional, is one of six book competing for the prize. For the first time, five are by women.

Wood’s novel is about a woman who abandons her job and her marriage to live in a nunnery. The prose is spare, the sense of place beautiful.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

Literary critic Gretchen Shirm described it as “extraordinary” in her review for The Australian’s books pages. 

In a statement from her publisher, Wood, 59, said: “I’m overjoyed … Stone Yard Devotional is the most personal book I have ever written, and in large part it’s a tribute to my late mother, whom I loved so much. We hear a lot about bad mothers in contemporary fiction but not so much about good ones, possibly because they’re harder to make interesting on the page.

“I’m beyond grateful that this amazing group of judges – such seriously talented artists and thinkers – have seen fit to bring this global attention to my work, and in doing so have put real value on the type of novel that leaves ample space for a reader to enter, and invites that reader to sink into the work quietly and deeply.

“I’m just so honoured, and in fact am still having a hard time processing the news.”

On Instagram, she added: “I don’t feel this very often but today I am proud.”

She thanked the “brilliant and beloved Jane Palfreyman” who was her publisher for many years before the latter left Allen & Unwin to join Simon & Schuster.

Palfreyman was also “thrilled” and calling for champagne.

The 2024 Booker shortlist.

In a statement, Wood’s publisher, Allen & Unwin, said they were “thrilled to congratulate Charlotte”, who is the first Australian to be shortlisted for the Booker since Richard Flanagan won in 2014.

Cate Paterson, publishing director at Allen and Unwin, said: “Everyone at Allen & Unwin is so proud of Charlotte Wood’s outstanding achievement … You can never predict these things. The whole company is celebrating.”

Wood’s literary agent, Jenny Darling, said: “I am so happy for Charlotte, for the shortlisting of this marvel of a novel.

“It pulls you in by a thread and you cannot let go.”

Shirm took to Instagram to congratulate Wood, saying: “I’m not really one to say I told you so, but I did kind of say it in my review.”

There, she said: “It is a stunning work of fiction from a major writer who keeps getting better.”

The winner of the Booker will be announced in London on ­November 12.

Wood’s toughest competition is likely to come from Samantha Harvey (the only British writer to make the cut), who wrote Orbital, which takes place on the International Space Station, and the wickedly amusing James, by Percival Everett, which rewrites the American classic Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, the slave.

The other shortlistees are: Held by Anne Michaels; The Safekeep by Yael van der ­Wouden; and ­Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake.