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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Miriam Balanescu

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein review – a masterly meditation on life as a survivor

‘Painting from a palette of dread’: Sarah Bernstein
‘Painting from a palette of dread’: Sarah Bernstein. Photograph: Alice Meikles

In the years since #MeToo, an outpouring of fiction by writers such as Emma Cline, Sophie Mackintosh and Rachel Yoder has grappled with what it means to be a victim, and what it takes to be an abuser. Montreal-born, Scottish-based author Sarah Bernstein’s second novel, Study for Obedience, spins a carefully woven web of culpability and criminality – of which gender is one fine thread – in answering its central question: if attacks on minority groups are unrelenting, in what ways do those groups internalise blame?

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