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Obedience (2011)

by Jacqueline Yallop(Favorite Author)

3.12 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0143120670 (ISBN13: 9780143120674)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Penguin

review 1: This novel annoyed me with its inscrutable protagonist -- or was she an anti-heroine? -- yet I was nevertheless drawn in and intrigued by the story. The writing style is simple and objective, reminiscent of Hemingway, come to think of it, in style as well as in its unglamorous portrayal of love and wartime. But the characters and lives it focuses on are far from Hemingway's realm: convented nuns and their struggles with faith and life after the cloister when the modern world forces them out. As a believer, I would have expected to identify more with the lives of women of faith, but I did not. But at least they were not stereotypes, even if they did not seem like fully realized characters. And why was it that Sister Bernard stopped hearing God's voice when her son (presumab... morely fathered by the German commandant who raped her, not the soldier whom she loved for no good reason) died? It's a mysterious tale, and the end brings no sense of resolution.
review 2: Sister Bernard, a young nun in a French convent during WWII, falls for a German soldier who is billeted nearby. It is difficult to know if Sister Bernard is capable of rational thinking; however, in the hope of keeping the German soldier interested, she betrays not only her vows, but the secrets of the Resistance movement. This novel moves between her past memories and the present day reality of having to leave the convent when she is in her 90s. There is a poignancy to this novel when the reader is allowed to see the consequences of Sister Bernard's long-ago decisions and heartbreak. I found it thought provoking and an interesting view of convent life. less

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