1 of 1 copy available
Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize
Included in Granta's Best of Young British Novelists 2023
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award
For readers of Shirley Jackson, Iain Reid, and Claire-Louise Bennett, a haunting, compressed masterwork from an extraordinary new voice in Canadian fiction.
A young woman moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her forebears to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him.
Soon after her arrival, a series of inexplicable events occurs - collective bovine hysteria; the demise of a ewe and her nearly born lamb; a local dog's phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed with some intensity at her and she senses a mounting threat that lies 'just beyond the garden gate.' And as she feels the hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother's property, she fears that, should the rumblings in the town gather themselves into a more defined shape, who knows what might happen, what one might be capable of doing.
With a sharp, lyrical voice, Sarah Bernstein powerfully explores questions of complicity and power, displacement and inheritance. Study for Obedience is a finely tuned, unsettling novel that confirms Bernstein as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Awards
-
Release date
September 19, 2023 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781039009103
- File size: 114816 KB
- Duration: 03:59:11
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
Sarah Bernstein performs her critically acclaimed novel in which an unnamed narrator moves to an unnamed northern country to become her brother's housekeeper after his wife leaves him. While her brother is figuring out his affairs, the woman attempts to make friends with the townspeople. But after a series of strange events--a dog's phantom pregnancy, diseased potatoes, the death of a ewe and her lamb--she discovers that her neighbors blame her for all of the bizarre happenings. Bernstein imbues her narration with the sense of otherworldliness that the woman feels as she tries to settle into her new home. Bernstein's performance echoes the uneasiness of the story, making listeners feel as unsettled and anxious as its protagonist. K.D.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
-