Sarah Bernstein (1) (1987–)
Autore di Study for Obedience
Per altri autori con il nome Sarah Bernstein, vedi la pagina di disambiguazione.
Sull'Autore
Fonte dell'immagine: Sarah Bernstein
Opere di Sarah Bernstein
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Data di nascita
- 1987-04-23
- Sesso
- female
- Nazionalità
- Canada
- Luogo di nascita
- Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Luogo di residenza
- Scotland, UK
Utenti
Recensioni
Liste
Premi e riconoscimenti
Statistiche
- Opere
- 3
- Utenti
- 243
- Popolarità
- #93,557
- Voto
- 3.1
- Recensioni
- 22
- ISBN
- 13
- Lingue
- 1
OPD: 2023
format: 195-page hardcover
acquired: December read: Mar 30 – Apr 6 time reading: 5:4, 1.6 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: contemporary fiction theme: Booker 2023
locations: outside a small village in a contemporary unnamed northern country with a non-English language and mountains, possibly fictional.
about the author: A Canadian writer and scholar who teaches literature and creative writing in Scotland. She was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1987.
I've stalled on this one. I just don't have a review in me. My first reaction on finishing, which I wrote down, was mainly: "Seriously, whoa. What did I just read?"
This book has such a curious interesting and maybe quite wonderful opening, tossing at us unnatural happenings, a hint at the Holocaust, and some very odd phrasing by a narrator who tells us she can only shed "a weak and intermittent" light on her own actions. What witchery is this?
Shirley Jackson’s [We Have Always Lived in the Castle] was always in my mind, our narrator a Merricat of sorts. But different. Merricat was openly bitter and judgmental and superior to those commoners in town. Here our narrator is a Jewish immigrant who doesn’t speak the language. She’s not superior in the same way. She professes a humbleness, a life "cultivating solitude, pursuing silence to its ever-receding horizon".
I was lost enough in this book that many things I read about afterward in reviews were things I completely missed (Here in the spoiler is a list. Don't open if haven't read it:
What I think I picked on was a sense of surreal dread and a notable cultural critique on our communal crimes, like our unabated creation of climate change, in full knowledge of what we are doing. How we are all guilty of communal crimes because we obey the rules of the world we live in, perpetuating its crimes to take care of ourselves.
Not sure I've provided anything useful here in this post. I enjoyed this curiosity, found it wonderfully done, found the writing, which focuses so much on the sound, always interesting and terrific, with its own rhythm and life. And I say this even as I didn't really get it. Anyway, I encourage anyone interested to plunge in. This maybe should have won the Booker over [Prophet Song], as terrific as PS was.
2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/358760#8514318… (altro)