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Study for obedience / Sarah Bernstein

By:

Bernstein, Sarah

Material type: Text

TextPublisher: Canada : Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2023Description: 192 p.; 21 cmISBN:

9781039009066

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

DDC classification:

FIC BER

Awards:

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, 2023
Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, 2023

Summary: 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. 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; 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. And inside the house, although she tends to her brother and his home with the utmost care and attention, he too begins to fall ill.

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Status	Notes	Date due	Barcode
Libro - Monografía	Biblioteca Pública de San Miguel de Allende, A.C. Sala Ingles	FIC BER (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available	Fiction		004022

Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-193)

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. 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; 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. And inside the house, although she tends to her brother and his home with the utmost care and attention, he too begins to fall ill.