Book description
Sister Bernard has lived in a grey-stone convent in rural France
for more than seventy years. In that time, a once youthful and lively
cloister has gradually emptied, until only Bernard and two other nuns
remain, a knot of survivors facing the creeping challenges of old age
- ailing bodies and worn-thin friendships, slips of mind and, in their
most secret moments, slips of faith. Now, the halls will fall silent
as the three women pack away their few possessions into wooden boxes,
preparing to leave the building that has been their home for decades.
For the nuns, the closing of the convent means more than losing a
home: the crumbling walls have shielded them from a changing modern
world; for Sister Bernard, the quiet monotony of the religious life
has protected her from memories of the past - the disgrace of when, as
a young woman in wartime France, she became the unwitting prize of a
cruel wager; when her devotion to God faded in the face of her need
for a young Nazi soldier; and when she experienced the full horror and
violence of war. Rich and complex, Obedience is a story of betrayal
and divided loyalties; a powerful portrait of conflicted love, which
goes beyond the veil to reveal a woman who feels adoration and fear,
guilt and pride, and all too rarely, peace. Sister Bernard is a
remarkable creation: a woman torn between her irreconcilable private
passions - her love for Christ and her blistered memories of physical desire.
