Study for Obedience

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

Study for Obedience follows the story of a woman who moves from her birthplace to a remote northern country to serve as housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him. As the youngest child of many siblings—more than she cares to remember—she has spent her earliest years attending to their every need, smoothing away discomfort with perfect obedience and the highest degree of devotion. The country to which she relocates is that of her family's ancestors, a people obscure yet reviled.

Upon her arrival, a series of unfortunate events unfolds—a collective bovine hysteria; the death of a ewe and her nearly-born lamb; a local dog's phantom pregnancy; the containment of domestic fowl; and a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion towards outsiders is directed particularly fiercely at her. It becomes evident she is being accused of wrongdoing, yet these accusations are made in a language she does not understand and therefore cannot contest. Despite her diligent and silent service to the community, she feels their hostility intensifying, encroaching upon her brother's property.

Inside the house, despite her meticulous care and attention to her brother and his home, he too begins to fall ill...