‘Study for Obedience’ — Sarah Bernstein
A Counter Arts Book Club Review
Author Sarah Bernstein, originally from Canada but now a resident of Scotland, has received a flurry of attention over this her second novel, ‘Study for Obedience’. She was the Winner of the 2023 Scotia Bank Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and placed upon the list Granta publish every ten years of the 20 best young (under 40) writers.
So what to make of the novel that elicited this high praise:
“The modernist experiment continues to burn incandescently in Sarah Bernstein’s slim novel, Study for Obedience. Bernstein asks the indelible question: what does a culture of subjugation, erasure, and dismissal of women produce? In this book, equal parts poisoned and sympathetic, Bernstein’s unnamed protagonist goes about exacting, in shockingly twisted ways, the price of all that the world has withheld from her. The prose refracts Javier Marias sometimes, at other times Samuel Beckett. It’s an unexpected and fanged book, and its own studied withholdings create a powerful mesmeric effect.” — 2023 Finalists — Scotiabank Giller Prize
In ‘Study for Obedience’, an unnamed female narrator moves from the life she has made for herself in a city, to a different country further north, which is described as the land of her forefathers, to live with and…
