Study for Obedience
By: Sarah Bernstein
3.05
Format: 192 pages, Hardcover
A haunting, compressed masterwork from an extraordinary new voice in Canadian fiction. A young w…
Want to Read $ 11.99"I try always to be good."-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience
"How, I wondered, might a person, a people, take root, roots and rootlessness, the preservation of what little remains of the past, such were thoughts that blew through me on any given morning, standing very still in the porch, or in the garden, in my bare feet, feeling suddenly: that sound, that rushing, it is the wind, it is the trees!"-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience
"In taking a side, I thought uneasily, perhaps I ought to take the long view, the survival of the species as a whole. That was my problem, I thought, I was always thinking at the level of the individual, in this case the rabbit, the grim scene unfolding before me in the garden as the kite pecked at the belly of the poor beast, initiating a gyration in the corpse or almost corpse of the poor rabbit, a kind of organy wobbling. Now what was that that reminded me of? A hanging, tremulous, a doorway and a tidy garden. What happened to one’s past when one got beyond it?"-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience
"I had hoped that here in the country I would experience the turn of the seasons differently, with less apprehension, I might come to see the form and plan of the world. Not to frame it within systems of understanding, of domination, no, I would work to allow the world its right to illegibility, to move in darkness. To take shape in its contact with people but to remain essentially itself. In the country, I would overcome this final difficulty at last, renounce my will to knowledge, give up my attachment to expression, and in this way come to understand the meaning of things."-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience
If you liked the audiobook plot in Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein , here is a list of 21 books like this:
1. Prophet Song
By: Paul Lynch
4.10
Format: 259 pages, Kindle Edition
A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internat… read more
Want to Read $ 9.10Similar categories in Paul Lynch's Prophet Song book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- literature
- fiction
- contemporary
- audiobook
"people are entitled to some small moment of peace."-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
"the child absorbing the mother’s trauma and storing it in his body for later use,"-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
"... time is at once addition and subtraction, time adds one day to the next and always takes away from what's left..."-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
"...knowing how it is so that all boys grow up and pull away from home to unmake the world in the guise of making it, nature decrees it so."-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
2. Old God's Time
By: Sebastian Barry
3.85
Format: 261 pages, Hardcover
From the two-time Booker Prize finalist author, a dazzlingly written novel exploring love, memory, … read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- audiobook
"Per ell aquest era el sentit de la jubilació, de l'existència: estar-se immòbil, feliç i inútil"-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time
"Per ell aquest era el sentit de la jubilació, de l'existència: estar-de immòbil, feliç i inútil"-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time
"No one minds life as long as they are not trying to leave it. Nor death, as long as they are not dying."-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time
3. The Wren, the Wren
By: Anne Enright
3.55
Format: 278 pages, Hardcover
An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of… read more
Want to Read $ 9.66Similar categories in Anne Enright's The Wren, the Wren book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- adult
- audiobook
"It's not that I think about him constantly, he is my way of thinking. His mind is my compass, his eyes my only mirror."-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren
"We don’t walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren
"We don't walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren
4. If I Survive You
By: Jonathan Escoffery
3.69
Format: 260 pages, Hardcover
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. … read more
Want to Read $ 11.99Similar categories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- adult
- audiobook
"What does Whiteness feel like?... I imagine it's like walking barefoot…"-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You
"Why don't stars make any sounds in the winter? What sounds? Ethan said."-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You
"Every boy deserves to believe him father is good, but if each father were good, we’d be living in a different kind of world."-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You
"I imagined I could have begged an old girlfriend from college to send money; enough of them had expressed ambivalence about their trust funds that this seemed a plausible path down which I might drag…"-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You
5. The House of Doors
By: Tan Twan Eng
4.14
Format: 320 pages, Hardcover
A spellbinding novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redempti… read more
Want to Read $ 9.99Similar categories in Tan Twan Eng's The House of Doors book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- audiobook
- literary fiction
- fiction
- novels
"Money's the sixth sense. If you don't have it, you can't make … the most of the other five."-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors
"I feel that when I travel I can change myself a little, and I return from a journey not quite the same self I was."-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors
"That night, side by side, we drifted among the galaxies of sea-stars, while far, far above us the asterisks of light marked out the footnotes on the page of eternity."-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors
"All of us will be forgotten eventually. Like a wave on the ocean, leaving no trace that it had once existed.' He shook his head. 'We will be remembered through our stories."-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors
6. A Spell of Good Things
By: Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
3.79
Format: 352 pages, Hardcover
Ayobami Adebayo, the celebrated author of Stay With Me unveils a dazzling story of modern Nigeria a… read more
Want to Read $ 11.99Similar categories in Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀'s A Spell of Good Things book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- adult
- audiobook
"Time was unforgiving, it didn’t stop, not even to give people a chance to scrape themselves off the floor if they’d been shattered."-Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, A Spell of Good Things
"He stared back at her, unconcerned. She had always marvelled at his calm assurance that everything good in his life would either remain the same or get better. He took good fortune for granted. As th…"-Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, A Spell of Good Things
7. This Other Eden
By: Paul Harding
3.78
Format: 224 pages, Hardcover
Set at the beginning of the twentieth century and inspired by historical events, This Other Eden te… read more
Want to Read $ 9.17Similar categories in Paul Harding's This Other Eden book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- literature
- fiction
- novels
- audiobook
8. The Bee Sting
By: Paul Murray
3.96
Format: 656 pages, Hardcover
From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and … read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- literature
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- audiobook
"It is for love. You are doing this for love."-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
9. How to Build a Boat
By: Elaine Feeney
3.78
Format: 298 pages, Paperback
This is the story of a remarkable boy and his search for his mother, told with warmth, tenderness a… read more
Want to Read $ 9.99Similar categories in Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- adult
- audiobook
"To some, the world is filled with threats. To others, opportunities."-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat
"That's dedication and if life's taught me anything, we go to what we love, eventually - we mightn't find it straight away, but we get there."-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat
"...[W]hile language came readily to Tess when dealing with herself alone, having one-way conversations over all of her choices on her long walks in the woods, or on her way to school, now she no long…"-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat
"How can I miss someone I have never met? Jamie said. Grief was profoundly different for both humans. One felt an intense anger he had never recovered from, the other knew something was missing, a vac…"-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat
10. All the Little Bird-Hearts
By: Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
3.80
Format: 297 pages, Hardcover
Sunday lives with her sixteen year old daughter Dolly, the same house she has lived in all her life… read more
Want to Read $ 14.99Similar categories in Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow's All the Little Bird-Hearts book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- adult
- audiobook
11. Wild Houses
By: Colin Barrett
3.78
Format: 272 pages, Hardcover
A darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and sma… read more
Want to Read $ 16.14Similar categories in Colin Barrett's Wild Houses book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- audiobook
"What you are in, Dev, is a holding pattern, only you're not holding out for anything."-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
"All boys, all children, are capable of cruelty at the right juncture of opportunity and circumstance, but only a few become committed prodigies of sadism..."-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
"In the dream, exactly as he had in real life, he sensed the slow, inexorable approach of the shapeless, prospectless days to come, days when there would be no need to get out of bed or brush his teet…"-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
"He looked around the empty kitchen. A part of him wanted this of course. A part of him had always wanted this, to be alone, away from even the prospect of any demand upon him to talk, to interact, to…"-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
12. Study for Obedience
By: Sarah Bernstein
3.05
Format: 192 pages, Hardcover
A haunting, compressed masterwork from an extraordinary new voice in Canadian fiction. A young w… read more
Want to Read $ 11.99Similar categories in Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- adult fiction
- literary fiction
- canada
- literature
- canadian literature
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- adult
- audiobook
"I try always to be good."-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience
"How, I wondered, might a person, a people, take root, roots and rootlessness, the preservation of what little remains of the past, such were thoughts that blew through me on any given morning, standi…"-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience
"In taking a side, I thought uneasily, perhaps I ought to take the long view, the survival of the species as a whole. That was my problem, I thought, I was always thinking at the level of the individu…"-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience
"I had hoped that here in the country I would experience the turn of the seasons differently, with less apprehension, I might come to see the form and plan of the world. Not to frame it within systems…"-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience
13. Western Lane
By: Chetna Maroo
3.51
Format: 160 pages, Hardcover
Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize A taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, a… read more
Want to Read $ 9.99Similar categories in Chetna Maroo's Western Lane book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- adult
- audiobook
14. In Ascension
By: Martin MacInnes
3.79
Format: 496 pages, Paperback
An astonishing novel about a young microbiologist investigating an unfathomable deep vent in the oc… read more
Want to Read $ 9.00Similar categories in Martin MacInnes's In Ascension book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- adult
- audiobook
"I questioned what else I had already missed so far, in my own life, simply through the limits of my character."-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension
"Once he had committed to this life, there was no way he could get out of it. He was angry at us, his daughters, because the financial demands of our existence bound him to it."-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension
"I kind of love it. It's so macabre. The reason we haven't seen or heard from anything off-world is that reaching off-world status is a civilisational death knell. Life either gets stuck there or dest…"-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension
"The air was thick with teeming life, just as the oceans and the rivers were. A spoonful of seawater or a pinch of soil between your fingers held billions of living things. We were blind to this out o…"-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension
15. Headshot
By: Rita Bullwinkel
3.63
Format: 224 pages, Hardcover
An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer” (Lorrie Moore) about the radical inti… read more
Want to Read $ 14.99Similar categories in Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- adult
- audiobook
"The desire to please people is the desire to not be singular."-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot
"Tanya Maw's sister is two years older, the perfect age gap for wisdom transmission."-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot
"It can be intoxicating to play a sport that requires one to look in their opponent's eyes."-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot
"It's a warmth that she'll feel again very few times in her life. It's almost like love, but it has a surer, less desperate edge to it."-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot
16. Pearl
By: Siân Hughes
3.91
Format: 220 pages, Paperback
A haunting debut novel inspired by the medieval poem of the same name Marianne is eight years ol… read more
Want to Read $ 13.99Similar categories in Siân Hughes's Pearl book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- adult
- audiobook
17. Orbital
By: Samantha Harvey
3.73
Format: 207 pages, Hardcover
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men … read more
Want to Read $ 11.99Similar categories in Samantha Harvey's Orbital book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- fiction
- contemporary
- novels
- adult
- audiobook
"Maybe we're the new dinosaurs and need to watch out."-Samantha Harvey, Orbital
"The past comes, the future, the past, the future. It's always now, it's never now."-Samantha Harvey, Orbital
"Raw space is a panther, feral and primal; they dream it stalking through their quarters."-Samantha Harvey, Orbital
"That's all this great human endeavor of space exploration really is, he thinks, an animal migration, a bid for survival. A looping song sent into the open, a territorial animal song."-Samantha Harvey, Orbital
18. All the Colour in the World
By: C.S. Richardson
3.74
Format: 208 pages, Hardcover
The story of the restorative power of art in one man's life, set against the sweep of the twentieth… read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in C.S. Richardson's All the Colour in the World book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- canada
- canadian literature
- fiction
- adult
- audiobook
19. The Islands: Stories
By: Dionne Irving
3.75
Format: 272 pages, Paperback
Powerful stories that explore the legacy of colonialism, and issues of race, immigration, sexual di… read more
Want to Read $ 11.99Similar categories in Dionne Irving's The Islands: Stories book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- canada
- fiction
- contemporary
- audiobook
20. The Double Life of Benson Yu
By: Kevin Chong
3.54
Format: 224 pages, Hardcover
This work of metafiction follows a graphic novelist losing control of his own narrative as he attem… read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Kevin Chong's The Double Life of Benson Yu book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- canada
- fiction
- contemporary
- audiobook
21. Held
By: Anne Michaels
3.66
Format: 240 pages, Hardcover
A breathtaking and mysterious new novel from the beloved Anne Michaels, internationally bestselling… read more
Want to Read $ 13.99Similar categories in Anne Michaels's Held book and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience
- literary fiction
- canada
- literature
- canadian literature
- fiction
- audiobook
"Who can say what happens when we are remembered?"-Anne Michaels, Held
"Do we really need our own misery to teach us to be kind?"-Anne Michaels, Held
"We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?"-Anne Michaels, Held
"Would he know the moment of his death or would it be like night falling."-Anne Michaels, Held