Skip to main content

Study for obedience by Sarah Bernstein


I suppose if I'm going to pick up a book with Granta written on the spine and a dead bird on the cover, then I ought to be prepared for something challenging, but this story is just weird.  I suspect I think it's weird because the whole thing just sailed right over my head, but generally speaking, I like to read for pleasure and there is not much of that to be found in here.

It's one of those books that is not about just the story-line but has references that are used to hammer home a heavier point.  In this case, there are pointers towards anti-Semitism, which is a topic that is very much front and centre at the moment, but I'm not convinced the narrator of this story will have said anything to resolve that issue (well not to me anyway).

We never know the narrators name, or where the book is set, apart from a mention of it being a northern territory cut off from most of the population.  The story tells of a woman who is the youngest of several children who has come to live in her eldest brother's house to take care of him.  The brother lives in quite a big old house and has a good job that involves going to conferences and travelling, but for some unexplained reason he expects his sister to be his general servant and do exactly as she is told.  The sister is the narrator and she clearly has issues of her own as she seems quite pleased to be offered the opportunity to do all the cooking and cleaning, she even gives her brother his daily bath and gets him dressed every morning and that can only be classed as weird.

All the neighbours speak some kind of native tongue that the narrator doesn't understand, although her brother does, and he makes arrangements for her and acts as a link to the local community.  Since this woman has arrived in the town a number of bad things have happened, such as a dog having a phantom pregnancy and a sow lying on her piglets killing every one of them.  The townspeople are afraid of the woman because they believe she is causing these things to happen, and they pull away from her wherever she goes. One of them even screams when she orders food in a café.  The woman says she would like to be more acceptable to them, but another part of her enjoys being pushed to one side, and when her brother instructs her to keep away and not even make eye contact with the others, she happily complies.

Even I picked up on a few refences to the Jewish faith, but without reading the Guardian review I don't think I would have linked the story to anti-Semitism.  I really don't think I am smart enough to keep up with this author.
 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Violeta by Isabel Allende

Published: 2022, Bloomsbury Genre: Fiction Themes: South America, family relationships, business My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ If I ever tell my life story, I will take a leaf out of Violeta's book and make sure you understand that everybody loved me, and despite all sorts of questionable behaviour on my part, I leave the world as a winner. This is the story of a hundred year life.  Violeta is approaching the end, but before she goes she is determined to write out her life story for someone she loves dearly.  You don't get to know who that special someone is for most of the book, but that just serves to give the narrative a little twist. I didn't much like the character of Violeta but I understand that people who don't go round upsetting the apple cart don't make for very interesting stories.  With such a great time span to play with, Isabel Allende had plenty of scope for changing Violeta's circumstances and adding in references to world events to keep the reader...
Post a Comment
Read more

Holding by Graham Norton

  Published: October 2016, Hodder and Stoughton Genre: fiction Themes: Ireland, crime, secrets, relationships, family My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ I went into the library looking for a book by Graham Norton as I keep seeing positive comments about his books on Twitter, and I felt I might be missing something. Holding seems to be his first book, and the library copy has a Radio 2 Book Club sticker on it, and I think it's fair to say that it's a perfect book for that reading group.  It's a chatty style of writing that I could imagine would be how Graham would recount a tale if he was in conversation with someone, and there are sufficient strong elements to the plot-line to keep it interesting to the end.  When I first started reading I thought it was going to be a bit thin on plot, as much of the story involved character descriptions, and I was starting to wonder how it was going to pull together.  Then the dramatic events began to unfold and, once I could see how everyon...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

  Publisher: Head of Zeus, 2021 Genre: Fiction Themes: Ancient Pompeii, slaves, brothel My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤  If, like me, you spent most of your history lessons looking out the window and didn't really absorb very much about the ancient Roman Empire, nil desperandum, as you will still manage perfectly well with this book. Set in first century Pompeii, the story follows the life of Amara, a young Greek woman who has been shipped to Pompeii as a slave and then bought by the owner of The Wolf Den brothel.  As the daughter of a doctor, she was bought up in relatively comfortable circumstances, but a series of terrible events turned her life upside down and she is now trapped in an endless cycle of fear and degradation with almost no hope of escape.  Amara is one of a group of slaves working in the Wolf Den, and they do what they can to protect one another from serious harm, but Amara knows that if she wants anything better for herself, she must make the brothel ow...
Post a Comment
Read more