Monday, October 17, 2011

Obedience by Jacqueline Yallop - Review by Nicky Pellegrino

There is an enduring fascination in the lives of nuns, in their self- denial and cloistered lives of prayer, but I’ve never read any novel on the subject quite like Obedience by Jacqueline Yallop (Atlantic, $29.99).
Set in rural France it’s about three ageing nuns facing the closure of the crumbling old convent where they’ve spent the greater part of their lives. Sister Marie is too senile to appreciate what’s happening, Sister Therese is tempted to shed her veil and begin a different life and Sister Bernard, who’s been 75 years in the convent, is remembering the young woman she once was. Her story moves between the present day, and the wartime years when the convent was still a bustling place and the village beyond it occupied by German soldiers.
The young Sister Bernard is slow-witted, dreamy and tormented by the hectoring voice of a judgemental God that she hears in her head almost all the time. Only when one of the young Germans begins showing her attention is God silenced for a time. The Nazi soldier makes Sister Bernard feel special. Unaware she’s the victim of a cruel wager, soon she is meeting him in secret and breaking her vow of chastity with a disturbing ease. Illicit love leads her into a far worse betrayal, one she fully understands only when it is too late, and a horror that lives on in the memories of the villagers over the decades that follow
As the old nun performs her final convent duties and prepares to enter a retirement home the sins of her past catch up with her. Freed from a lifetime’s routines and rituals she allows herself to sorrow – and to hope - for the first time.
This is an intense and powerful story about love both sacred and profane that’s simply told and brilliantly imagined. Bleak and poignant, shocking in parts, it’s a novel that reads easily and still provokes thought.
Now based in France, British author Yallop is an academic and has worked as a museum curator. Her writing has thoroughness and a simple elegance that’s devastatingly effective. But it’s Sister Bernard who is her triumph. If what you want in a novel is likeable characters then she’ll come as a disappointment. She is far more complicated than that: both sinner and victim, at best simple-minded at worst mentally disturbed, passive and unquestioning. You’re unlikely to warm to her but as you learn her secrets it’s impossible not to feel compassion.
Wartime stories and nuns tales are common enough but Obedience manages to be something different. Yallop’s second novel is a tightly written study of betrayal, faith, loneliness and desire. The coolness and restraint of her prose seems ideally suited to the story’s setting and its themes. It’s a satisfying read and hopefully the enthusiastic cover quote from Booker prize-winning author Hilary Mantel will help it find the audience it deserves.


Footnote:Nicky Pellegrino, a succcesful author of popular fiction, (The Italian Wedding was published in May 2009 while her latest, Recipe for Lifewas published by Orion in April, 2010), is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where this review was first published on 16 October, 2011.


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