In store now! Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein

Keep up with news from Granta Books here @GrantaBooks

Order your copy today directly through October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get a commission on your purchase.

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein

Hardback £12.99

A young woman moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her forebears to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him. 

Soon after her arrival, a series of inexplicable events occurs - collective bovine hysteria; the demise of a ewe and her nearly born lamb; a local dog's phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed with some intensity at her and she senses a mounting threat that lies 'just beyond the garden gate.' And as she feels the hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother's property, she fears that, should the rumblings in the town gather themselves into a more defined shape, who knows what might happen, what one might be capable of doing.

With a sharp, lyrical voice, Sarah Bernstein powerfully explores questions of complicity and power, displacement and inheritance. Study for Obedience is a finely tuned, unsettling novel that confirms Bernstein as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.

Study for Obedience was shortlisted for The Booker Prize 2023

Order your copy today directly from October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get commission on your purchase.

We are open:

Monday - Saturday

10am - 5.30 pm

We are back open six days a week, with the whole store open for browsing. We will still of course be taking customer orders and you will still be able to buy food and cleaning products online through our online store. 

We are able to be open 6 days a week again because of your consideration and care whilst in the shop. Though things are opening up, covid cases are still high and a lot of our staff have only received one jab. So we are asking customers to continue to leave that extra space, sanitise their hands and pull on their mask. We really appreciate it.