Study for Obedience
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Book Overview
WINNER OF THE 2023 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
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.
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.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1039009085
ISBN13:9781039009080
Release Date:August 2024
Publisher:Vintage Books Canada
Length:208 Pages
Weight:0.40 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 5.2" x 7.9"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
I can't explain how I feel about this book
Published by Ruth R , 3 months ago
I think I liked it, but I’m having a hard time verbalizing what I liked about it and why I liked it. It was creepy and an how the protagonist accepts self deprecating views put on her by others so easily. It’s creepy how the town folk treat her. I constantly felt like something was about to happen, but then nothing happened… But I’m not mad about it. So again, I enjoyed it, but I’m having a hard time expressing why…
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