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A review by criticalgayze
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Y’all, this might easily end up being my favorite book on the Booker list this year even though I’m still not exactly sure what happened in it.
When the book opens, and from what the synopsis of the book lays out, it feels like you are reading a work of historical fiction, in fact one of the comp titles that sprang most immediately to mind was Sarah Waters’s Booker shortlist title “The Little Stranger.” However, fairly quickly, references to modernity, including Microsoft Teams, begin to creep in.
The farther I got in, the more the most appropriate comparison titles really seemed to be Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Iain Reid’s Foe, books where the sort of off-kilter nature progress and grow throughout the book. This mistrust and disquiet develops into an almost Prynnian communal distrust of this out of place narrator, who is herself anachronistic to this town in many ways.
This is easily the most daring book from the list so far, which I think could bode either ill or well in the book’s favor, and I hope the Booker judges see what I do.
When the book opens, and from what the synopsis of the book lays out, it feels like you are reading a work of historical fiction, in fact one of the comp titles that sprang most immediately to mind was Sarah Waters’s Booker shortlist title “The Little Stranger.” However, fairly quickly, references to modernity, including Microsoft Teams, begin to creep in.
The farther I got in, the more the most appropriate comparison titles really seemed to be Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Iain Reid’s Foe, books where the sort of off-kilter nature progress and grow throughout the book. This mistrust and disquiet develops into an almost Prynnian communal distrust of this out of place narrator, who is herself anachronistic to this town in many ways.
This is easily the most daring book from the list so far, which I think could bode either ill or well in the book’s favor, and I hope the Booker judges see what I do.