{"id":1599,"date":"2023-11-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T20:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1599"},"modified":"2025-01-03T10:45:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T21:45:51","slug":"study-for-obedience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2023\/11\/25\/study-for-obedience\/","title":{"rendered":"Study For Obedience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Sarah Bernstein<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Allen &amp; Unwin<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, November 25th 2023<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The nameless narrator of Sarah Bernstein\u2019s slender but weighty novel is a cipher. Raised from infancy to serve her family and \u2018<em>encouraged\u2019 by her siblings \u201cto suppress any hint of ambition or self-love as it arose\u201d<\/em>, her life is contingent on the whims of others, a projection of desire simultaneously needed and reviled. Summoned to her eldest brother\u2019s service after the collapse of his marriage, she finds herself in a cold, remote Northern country from which her Jewish ancestors, <em>\u201cobscure but reviled\u201d, <\/em>were brutally expurgated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Regarded with intense suspicion by the local community and estranged by her inability to master the language, she slowly becomes attached to the place and its people, recognising that her brother\u2019s dependence and her social exclusion (\u201ca service undertaken in the interests of community cohesion)\u201d gives her the power to claim her place within it. Glimpses of the narrator\u2019s history are obliquely visible alongside contemporary events: repeated allusions to her family\u2019s need to subdue her \u201cuncommon pride and self-love\u201d, her striving for goodness despite being marked by original sin, of a life of permanent and latent terror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">It is clear why the novel made the shortlist; its clever construction and weighty themes are hard to overlook. At one level, it is the story of an abused woman exacting revenge by refusing to be broken. At another, it is that of the Jewish people, her presence a reminder of the townsfolk\u2019s complicity in her ancestor\u2019s brutal eviction (a subject further complicated by current events). The writing, which skirts the borders of interior monologue, is equally challenging. Discursive, multi-clausal half-page meanderings are punctuated by short, descriptive sentences, creating a musicality that feels almost 19<sup>th<\/sup> century in tone. <em>Study for Obedience<\/em> will infuriate some readers, enrapture others. Where I stand on this continuum, I have yet to decide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/booker-prize-finalists\">https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/booker-prize-finalists<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sarah Bernstein Allen &amp; Unwin Otago Daily Times, November 25th 2023 The nameless narrator of Sarah Bernstein\u2019s slender but weighty novel is a cipher. Raised from infancy to serve her family and \u2018encouraged\u2019 by her siblings \u201cto suppress any hint of ambition or self-love as it arose\u201d, her life is contingent on the whims of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[428,370,18,444],"class_list":["post-1599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-428","tag-fiction","tag-odt","tag-sarah-bernstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1599"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1601,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions\/1601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}