Books: The joy of friendship, bad bosses and truly mad parents

Study for Obedience - Sarah Bernstein (Granta) Allegory on antisemitism

In Sarah Bernstein’s unsettling novel, Study for Obedience, we are presented with an unnamed narrator who has moved to an unnamed northern country to take care of her older brother whose wife has left him. This role of carer is not unusual for our narrator who, even as the youngest child, took care of her needy siblings.

But almost as soon as she arrives at her brother’s baronial home, in this country where they are both strangers, a series of unfortunate events occur to the local animals for which the townspeople hold her responsible: a herd of cows has gone mad and must be put down; a depressive sow crushes her piglets to death, a ewe dies while giving birth.