In "Study for Obedience", the anonymous narrator tells how she dropped everything after his brother's marriage broke up, in order to serve him. The brother lives lavishly in an old mansion in a remote mountain village. Once her brother leaves on business, she remains alone in the house, trying to connect with the villagers who seem to avoid or even reject her. She is at the full service of her brother, as the youngest child in the family and "trained" for this role of obedience and servitude. Bernstein's narrator is quite elliptical in her description of her situation. You can expect abuse or even incest by her brother, although it's never explicitly mentioned. You can expect the villagers to act as they do because she and her brother are jewish, or rich, or intruders, or all of those, but without clear explanation. The narrator tries her best to fold in, even volunteering to help with farming, but all in vain.
Bernstein manages to create a very coherent narrative, both in content and style, an unusual book, written with precision and elegance, shimmering with unsaid emotions, by a main character who appears a little naive, simple and of course docile, and allows life to unroll without too much intervening, and when she does, tiny problems and frictions seem to arise. So her safety spot is just to do what others want.
As a reader, you cannot but sympathise with her predicament, and even if - I think - my personality is the complete opposite of the narrator, Bernstein brings her to life in such a way that anyone will relate to her.
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