Author Charlotte Wood has been long listed for the prestigious Booker prize. Photo: Henry Simmonds.
Author Charlotte Wood, who spent her childhood in Cooma, has been long-listed for one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards, the Booker Prize.
The nomination is for Wood’s novel Stoneyard Devotional, set on the Monaro, and telling the story of a woman who seeks refuge on the bleak high plains. Entering a convent’s retreat house, she’s absorbed into a small world in a small, remote place.
It’s territory Wood has explored in previous novels including The Natural Way of Things, where women being held prisoner realise they’re being punished for sexual entanglements with powerful men. That novel won a slew of awards including the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2016.
Stoneyard Devotional, published last year, is her seventh work of fiction. It examines grief and the decision to walk away from a former life. There is also – in scenes that horrified urban reviewers – a massive mouse plague.
When the novel was released, Wood said later drafts had been infused with the grief and fear she felt at her breast cancer diagnosis, which happened at the same time as both of her sisters were also diagnosed with the disease (all have since recovered).
“I was already on this path of writing a very spacious, spare kind of novel about things that I think are fundamental … but when I went back to [writing], it quadrupled that sensation; that feeling that I wanted nothing extraneous in this book,” she told ABC Radio National.
“Everything felt more elemental, more rigorous and stringent, in that I didn’t want anything that didn’t absolutely matter to go into this book.
“It’s the deepest book that I’ve written … I trusted my instincts, and I kept trusting them.”
It’s the first time an Australian has been listed for the Booker Prize since 2016 and Wood faces stiff international competition for the prize purse, worth almost $100,000.
She is one of 12 authors on the longlist, alongside previous Booker contenders Percival Everett, Richard Powers and Rachel Kushner.
In a statement, the author said, “I’m beyond delighted to have been selected for the Booker longlist by such a highly esteemed group of judges. To be named alongside these outstanding writers from around the world is an extraordinary honour, and I’m immensely grateful.”
Wood grew up at Cooma, where her father worked for the Snowy Hydro Scheme.
After completing a cadetship on the Cooma Monaro Express, she studied journalism at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst. Her first novel was published in 1999, when she was 34.
Of those early years, she wrote, “My articles – about the artificial insemination of cattle, say, or the latest Lions Club fundraising effort for a new piece of hospital equipment – were competent and no doubt accurate enough … I remember being asked once if I had ever thought about writing a novel.
“The idea seemed utterly ludicrous. My questioner might as well have asked if I had yearnings to captain a ship to Antarctica or become a world-famous belly dancer.”
Stoneyard Devotional was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for fiction and literary fiction book of the year at the Australian Book Industry Awards, and long-listed for the Miles Franklin award.
The Booker judging panel said they were “thrilled and chilled” by the novel.
The Booker Prize shortlist is released on 17 September and the winner will be announced on 13 November.
Original Article published by Genevieve Jacobs on Riotact.
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