Here’s book #3 of 6 in my quick run through the Booker Prize Short List (and other lists ?)  for 2023.  This one is about 200 pages in length, so short it could be another novella. The author narrates it herself which is often a drawback, but sometimes, like here, it’s works out nicely. It works in part because the protagonist’s situation is complex including her apparent paranoia, OCD,  grandiosity, inferiority complex, and some kind of depression all of which end up with her being an unreliable, narrator reminding me of My Year of Rest and Relaxation ~ by Ottessa Moshfech (my review on site).

Study for Obedience
by Sarah Bernstein 
2023 / (208 pp)
Read by the author 3h 59m
Rating: 9: 21st century lit

This story has an unnamed woman as 1st person narrator, but as she says about half-way through the story, “Names are secret,” and, “One always assumes guilt.”

 At some point the reader begins to think the woman is at least a studious introvert, but then it becomes apparent she’s also suspicious of almost everyone and she has some with some OCD traits thrown in as well as some anxiety issue and an active imagination.  Do I have to say this? She’s not a terribly reliable narrator- lol.She reminds me a bit of Ottessa Moshfegh’s protagonist in Eileen (2015).   But at the same time I found her to be kind of pleasant, in her own way. OCD,  grandiosity, inferiority complex, and some kind of all of which end up with her being an unreliable narrator –  in this she reminds me of  My Year of Rest and Relaxation ~ by Ottessa Moshfech https://mybecky.blog/2018/11/30/my-year-of-rest-and-relaxation-by-ottessa-moshfech/

Her eldest brother (one of many older siblings) calls and asks her to come stay with him, to serve as his housekeeper while he gets accustomed to his wife being gone- they’re newly separated. He has moved to a country in the distant north and from where their ancestors lived. Our protagonist is unemployed at the moment so she figures she can do this; she’s always been the caretaker of her elder siblings. So she flies north to join her brother in a place she says their ancestors were from, but she isn’t saying where this is.

Her brother picks her up in his luxury car, takes her to his lovely home, explains some things, and then leaves for a few days of business. With him gone, the woman is alone in a big, beautifully kept house, a manor or an estate it seems.  

She goes to town for some groceries, but she finds she’s unable to communicate except by using basic hand signs. She tells us she’s very good at languages, but isn’t sure these people understand English. The town folk don’t speak to her. She doesn’t know the value of their money and she can’t read the names on some mail she sees. She wants to thank to the people of the town because it’s so pretty, but has no way of doing this except to volunteer the way her brother did. This gets some real troubles started. 

 To me she sounds paranoid with some traits of OCD, but her brother and the townsfolk seem to have some or issues, too. There appear to be a lot of secrets. Brother left money for her and he telephones her, is not happy about her language problem.  He tells her how he loves the people and the natural beauty of the place so he wants to stay and become a part of it.

After a few days she ventures into town again and finds the people still reticent and she’s not letting them or the reader know anything more, not the country she’s in, nor any real clues about that, not her name, not their money they use; she does the shopping by pointing and handing the clerk some bills . She carefully does not say anything which will identify her. This feels very odd.  

A paraphrase from about … “The world is terrible and she’s being obedient and she’ll be released soon and there will be retribution.” –  that’s her thinking at one point and it’s not much of any kind of spoiler.  .   
This is a wonderful haunting book and I’m going to have to read it again because I never got the Kindle version –