I hate mice. No, more than hate. I have a phobia. They never used to worry me until 15 years ago, when our house was overrun after a large empty block of land next door was subdivided and developed. All the mice, who had lived happily in the grasses for years, took up residence with us. There was shit evidence of them everywhere. You would hear them at night. You would see them dart across the floor out of the corner of your eye. I would vacuum along the skirting boards every morning, the droppings pinging in the vacuum like gravel. It took us weeks to get rid of them.

I mention the mice because although Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood is about a woman who retreats to a small religious community in regional New South Wales, and more specifically, the return of a nun’s body to the Sisters in the community, the backdrop for the story is a mouse plague. Wood’s descriptions of the mice made me so anxious (I’m not over-stating that – I frequently put the book down when the mouse bits became too much) that I can only assume that she also isn’t a huge fan of mice. Continue reading →