Charlotte Wood has become the first Australian female writer to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize since 2006, and the first Australian since 2014. Wood’s novel, Stone Yard Devotional was described by the Booker Prize judges as: “A fierce and philosophical interrogation of history, memory, nature, and human existence.”
“It is set in a claustrophobic environment and reveals the vastness of the human mind: the juxtaposition is so artfully done that a reader feels trusted by the author to be an intellectual partner,” the judges wrote.
“It chronicles one woman’s inward journey to make sense of the world — and her life — when conflicts and chaos are abundant in both realms.”
On her socials, Wood thanked her Australian publisher, Jane Palfreyman, whom she descried as “brilliant & beloved.”
“I don’t feel this very often, but today I am proud,” she wrote. “Congratulations to these outstanding writers, and thank you, forever, to the @thebookerprizes judges who have seen my novel – this means so much.”
“Most of all, gratitude to the utterly brilliant Federico Andornino & all at @sceptrebooks, to the equally brilliant & beloved Jane Palfreyman and all at @allenandunwin, and to my dear, clever, magnificent agents Jenny Darling & Veronique Baxter.”
In a statement Wood provided to her Australian publisher Allen & Unwin, the Sydney-based author said she was “overjoyed” by the nomination.
“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,” she said. “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.”
Charlotte’s literary agent, Jenny Darling said, “I am so happy for Charlotte, for the short-listing of this marvel of a novel. It pulls you in by a thread and you cannot let go. It will never leave me.”
This year’s judges included novelists Sara Collins and Yiyun Li, UK Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan, producer and composer Nitin Sawhney and chair of the judges Edmund de Waal.
Stone Yard Devotional follows the life of a mid-aged woman who settles into a monastery in rural NSW and slowly uncovers layers of repressed grief as she finds shelter in a convent. Upon its release in Australia last year, it received glowing reviews. The Guardian called it a “a powerful, generous book.” The ABC described it as “a quiet, contemplative novel.”
The last Australian to be shortlisted for the Booker was in 2014, when Richard Flanagan took home the award for his sixth novel, The Narrow Road to Deep North, which is currently being adapted into a five-part Amazon Prime Video miniseries.
That year, the prize changed its name from “Man Booker Prize” to “Booker Prize” and expanded the eligibility rules to include authors of any nationality who have published an English-language novel in the UK and/or Ireland.
The last time an Australian female writer was shortlisted was in 2006, when Kate Grenville’s The Secret River and MJ Hyland’s Carry Me Down were nominated.
This year’s Booker shortlist is also the largest contingent of female writers in the prize’s history — with five of the six authors being women. They include US novelist Rachel Kushner, British writer Samantha Harvey, Canadian author Anne Michaels and Dutch writer and teacher, Yael van der Wouden.
At 37, Wouden becomes the first Dutch author to make the shortlist, with her debut novel The Safekeep, which was described by The New York Times as “a quietly remarkable book” about a young woman in 1960s Amsterdam who becomes obsessed with her brother’s new girlfriend.
Kushner, who is currently in the UK on her book-tour for her seventh book, Creation Lake, has previously been shortlisted for the Booker, for her 2018 novel, The Mars Room.
Judge Sara Collins, said the fact that five women had been shortlisted was “a genuine surprise.”
“We came up with the shortlist, we sat back and looked at the pile and someone said: ‘Ha, there are five women there’,” Collins told BBC. “These books rose to the top on merit – they are tremendous books but… it was such a gratifying, surprising, thrilling moment to realise.”
“My experience as a writer is that publishing is… dominated at certain levels by women but the literary recognition… has still seemed to be reserved for men.”
Chairperson Edmund de Waal described the shortlisted titles as books where “people confront the world in all its instability and complexity.”
“My copies of these novels are dog-eared, scribbled in,” he said. “They have been carried everywhere – surely the necessary measure of a seriously good novel…[they are] books that made us want to keep on reading, to ring up friends and tell them about them, novels that inspired us to write, to score music.”
The winner of the Booker Prize will be announced on the evening of Tuesday, November 12 at a ceremony in London. If Wood’s novel takes home the prize, she will become the first Australian woman to win, and receive the prize, worth £50,000 ($AUD98,000).
Wood is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Over the past decades, she has picked up numerous awards for her books, including the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the Stella Prize, which she won for her 2015 title, The Natural Way of Things. Her titles have frequently been finalists for awards including the Miles Franklin Award, Victorian Premier’s Prize for Fiction and the Australian Book Industry Awards.
Image: Allen & Unwin