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Study for Obedience

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Study for Obedience

By: Sarah Bernstein
Narrated by: Sarah Bernstein
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About this listen

A powerful, compressed masterwork for fans of Shirley Jackson and Claire-Louise Bennett.

A woman moves from the place of her birth to a remote northern country to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has just left him. The youngest child of many siblings - more than she cares to remember - from earliest childhood she has attended to their every desire, smoothed away the slightest discomfort with perfect obedience, with the highest degree of devotion. The country, it transpires, is the country of their family's ancestors, an obscure though reviled people.

Soon after she arrives, a series of unfortunate events occurs - collective bovine hysteria; the demise of a ewe and her nearly-born lamb; a local dog's phantom pregnancy; the containment of domestic fowl; a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed particularly in her case. What is clear is that she is being accused of wrongdoing, but in a language she cannot understand and so cannot address. And however diligently and silently she toils in service of the community, still she feels their hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother's property...

©2023 Sarah Bernstein (P)2023 Sarah Bernstein Contemporary Fiction Genre Fiction Psychological Small Town & Rural Fiction

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Critic reviews

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023

NAMED AS ONE OF GRANTA MAGAZINE'S BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2023
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I found it hard going to be in this young woman’s conscience. It was somewhat drab to be with a woman who thought so little of herself, determined to serve her brother in a old type suspicious community in a foreign country. I don’t think the narrator helped much with a nearly monotone reading… or perhaps that was meant. I felt the most dramatic part suddenly ended but I could well have missed something as I was flagging. I listened until the end as the idea was interesting and the description of the surrounds could be beautiful. . I did breathe a sigh of relief when I got out of the hard work of being in that head. Bur perhaps that was the point?

An earnest heavy experience.

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A blurred account of both pathological and veritable victimhood.
Dense prose obfuscates blame, cause and intent, whilst also obscuring potential signs of what has happened.
I want to revisit and suspect I will arrive at a different conclusion next time.

Needs revisiting

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Such a dreary book though beautifully written. The narration was monotone which, although fitting, made it all such a hard slog.

Dreary

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I listened through this but didn't feel that there really was a story that grasped me.

I heard it

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Having listened to it, i’m not entirely sure what this book was about. It has been written with a lot of description which kept reverting to a back story with no link to forward development. There was little dialogue and interaction with other characters which made the narrative difficult to follow. I thought the overall plot had good potential when I read the overview but there was little development of the plot throughout.

A weak narrative

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