This is a series of essays, many previously published in magazines and newspapers, but brought together in this one volume. As each essay is complete in of itself, you can dip into this book as you please.

I found so much in this book: sometimes I felt a huge sense of the author reading my mind; other times she challenged some long held beliefs. But always I felt that I was in safe hands, as Woods is never judgemental or preachy. She is immensely honest and generous.

Here are some of my favourite quotes:

Fertile Ground (nourishing the inner life): ‘When first learning to meditate, we’re sent into a state of alarm. For most of us, stillness gives rise to dread. Yet in those times my imaginative world has been most alive. I’ve learned something that felt important: stillness is not a void; it’s a well.’

‘I suspect this paradoxical fear of and need for emptiness is why artists have always been such enthusiastic walkers….silent walking allows the mind to empty without the paralysing fear of stillness.’

‘So many in our world live in the midst of unspeakable pain, and as individuals we have no way of easing most of it. But it feels important to say that, despite this, we’re allowed to protect and nurture that which helps each us to live fully. Soon we’ll die, but right now we’re alive - let’s not waste that outrageous luck. We have a right to joy. ‘

An Element of Lightness (laughter as a creative force): ‘So what do I mean when I say laughter, as opposed to comedy, or even humour? The distinction is perhaps a fine one, but also to my mind important. What I’m talking about is something beyond, of possibility that comes when laughter enters a work of art, whether it’s manifest on the page or merely part of the writer’s process. For laughter is a sharp instrument, it turns out, capable of performing may crucial, even profound functions. ‘

The Paint Itself (the world inside the sentence): ‘The work of a writer, day to day, is in playing with sentences. Weighing and balancing them, interrogating them for precision. And the focus on subject matter and theme - those topics that become shorthand descriptors, like trauma or misogyny or aging - seems to miss the point of what art is really for. ‘

Reading Isn’t Shopping (why creativity needs disturbance): This particular essay really challenged me! Wood looks at the current expectation that works are only of value if they are ‘relatable’. And she argues that this is a result of ‘consumer culture’, where ‘every interaction is followed by a request for a star rating, a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. We’ve been slowly but thoroughly trained to see the world in terms of its capacity to please us…’ She goes on to interrogate the ‘deification of empathy’. She quotes Sarah Sentinels who writes that society must embrace ‘unknowable otherness’. Otherwise, if we rely on empathy; a sense of sameness to act ethically, what happens if we cannot find that sense of likeness? It’s easy to act ethically when we feel ‘they’ are just like ‘us’; the challenge is to still act ethically when ‘they’ are different to ‘us’.

On Gods and Ghosts (Catholicism, contradiction and creativity): having been raised in the Catholic tradition, a lot of what Wood says about her experience resonates with me! ‘If Catholicism formed my writing as definitively as it formed me, if it is one of my potent inner objects, my crystals, what might be the refractive glints coming off it?’
‘But maybe the most powerful gift my religious upbringing gave me was my ambivalence towards it, and the resulting ability to dwell in a place of tension and discomfort that will never be eased. ‘

Not a word is wasted in this lyrical meditation on one woman’s life choices. After attending a number of retreats at a Catholic nuns convent, the protagonist decides to stay and become a member of their community (although she doesn’t enter the order). Her name is never revealed. Her thoughts are recorded in diary-like entries.

The convent is located on the stark plains of the Monaro, part of the Snowy Mountains Region of NSW. The quiet rhythm of the monastic life is disrupted, firstly by a mouse plague, and then by the return of the skeletal remains of a nun who left decades before to minister overseas. She had gone missing, presumed murdered. Accompanying the bones is another nun who creates unrest in the community.

This is not a plot-driven book! It’s quiet and contemplative.

I found this book very moving. Wood explores one woman’s struggle to come to terms with the tension created by not believing in God, but taking refuge in a religious community. She considers questions about forgiveness, goodness and hope.

“My life has has not been what I believed it to be.”

Jude, Wendy, Adele and Sylvie have been friends for over forty years, since their shared days in Oxford. Now all living in Australia, they gather each year at Sylvie’s beach house for Christmas. This year, however, Jude, Wendy and Adele gather to clean the house, ready for sale, because Sylvie has died.

In a plot reminiscent of The Big Chill, the loss of their friend disturbs the balance in the group, and old grievances, disappointments and secrets are explored and revealed. Wood uses this claustrophobic setting to ruminate on the side-effects (some tragic, some comedic) of growing old. The humidity and stifling heat create a literal and metaphoric hot-house of emotions, brought to a climax by a violent summer storm.

There are passages in The Weekend that are truly sublime, for example: ’[Wendy] felt ashamed, because it seemed to her that the rich detail of the world was precious, but she only knew this after she had missed it. It had been the case all her life…she realised she had not paid enough attention, and now those things were just outlines; gone.’ Adele, whose work as an actress dried up after she reached ‘a certain age’, ‘at times feels on the edge of discovering something very important - about living, about the age beyond youth and love, about this great secret time of a person’s life.’

It’s sometimes hard to like these women. Woods has created characters who are teetering very close to being stereotypes - and not very likeable. Jude is particularly critical of the others, and I kept wondering why they’ve remained friends. There seems to be more shared frustration and anger than love and support. What keeps these women together? Then Adele answered my question; ’they saw their best selves in each other’.

A special mention must be made of Wendy’s ageing dog Finn, who poignantly reminds the women of the indignity of growing old (and incontinent) and unlovely. Finn is the star of this book, and certainly the most loveable character. However, I ultimately grew to love them all by the end of the weekend. Highly recommended.

3 1/2 stars
I’m going to stick my neck out a bit here as so many others have raved about how amazing this book is. I’ve given it 3 1/2 stars for a number of reasons, but the main would be the disappointing ending. It just kinda fizzled! And I felt cheated by how little was really explained. However, I do agree with other reviewers regarding how lyrical, brutal and honest Wood’s writing is. Her descriptions of the landscape and the appalling conditions the women find themselves in are searingly visceral. It is a very disturbing novel which illustrates how close we really are to our most base instincts, no matter how we try to distance ourselves. Others have compared it to “Lord of the Flies”; I kept thing of Sachar’s “Holes” with its seemingly senseless hard labor and blasted landscape.
This novel is an uncomfortable and confronting read and not for the fainthearted.