Anne Bogle

And it was described to me before I picked it up as a book that sounds quiet but reads as anything but.

And you do get a lot of inner life musings in this story.

But you also see this Sydney woman who has retreated to take up residence, not as an initiate, but she's living at a convent and lodging there far from home on the plains of New South Wales.

She has taken a leave of absence from her life, from her work, from her family, from her marriage.

And when she first comes to the convent, she's just literally lying on the floor for many hours a day thinking like, how did I get here?

So lots of inner life.

But we do see her interact with people as well.

There's a series of three arrivals here.

happens in this story.

When we were talking about books that have substance and layers and a structure that will hold when you push on it, that doesn't give everything up on the first reading, that you like really could like dig under and around and see what the author is up to, this structure of the visitations I think could be interesting to explore.

But there are these visitations and they really disrupt our narrator's peace and call her for different reasons to contemplate her past and future life.

Now, one of these visitations is an overwhelming invasion of mice and the descriptions of these were like, they're kind of icky.

I'm thinking now of how you said you didn't like the descriptions of some of the things in nature found in the vaster wilds.

They're brief, but like she wants you to know that overwhelming invasion of mice, like she's being serious about that overwhelming part.

And there's a couple of brief descriptions that...

give you a sense of the scope here.

But also the mortal remains of one of the convent sisters who died far away for reasons that are gone into arrive back to rest at the convent.

And that kicks up a lot of excitement and gossip among the nuns.

And then there's a climate activist who comes to visit.

And our narrator knew her in a past life.