Study for Obedience: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

Study for Obedience is a novel recognised in 2023 with major literary honours: it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was longlisted for the Highland Book Prize. It is also linked to Granta Magazine’s Best of Young British Novelists 2023. The book is described as a powerful, compressed work, and is presented for readers who enjoy Shirley Jackson and Claire-Louise Bennett.

The story centres on a woman who leaves her birthplace for a remote northern country to keep house for her brother after his wife departs. The youngest of many siblings, she has spent her life meeting other people’s needs with obedience and devotion. The country she arrives in is the land of her family’s ancestors, an obscure people who are nonetheless reviled.

Key details

• Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023
• Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2023
• Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2023
• Linked to Granta Magazine’s Best of Young British Novelists 2023

Synopsis

After she arrives, a run of misfortunes follows: 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. As suspicion of incomers grows, she senses that the focus falls particularly on her.

Accused of wrongdoing in a language she cannot understand, she cannot answer back. While she continues to work quietly and diligently in service of the community, she feels hostility gathering at the edges of her brother’s property.