Study for Obedience
Sarah Bernstein
Oct 2023 · Granta Books · Narrated by Sarah Bernstein
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3 hr 59 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 NAMED AS ONE OF GRANTA MAGAZINE'S BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2023 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...
About the author
Sarah Bernstein is from Montreal, Quebec and lives in the Northwest Highlands. Her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in places like tender, Contemporary Women's Writing, MAP, Granta and Room Magazine. She teaches modern and contemporary literature. Her first novel The Coming Bad Days was published in 2021. In 2023, she was named as one of Granta magazine's Best of Young British Novelists.
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