Jacqueline Yallop: Old habits die hard

Author Jaqueline Yallop maintains a cool restraint in her prose. Photo / Supplied

The tale of a nun's betrayal proves shocking - and thought-provoking, writes Nicky Pellegrino.

There is an enduring fascination with 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 was 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 starts 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 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 endures in the memories of the villagers in 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 who 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.