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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Striking storylines, striking parallels - amazing!,
By
This review is from: Disobedience: A Novel (Hardcover)
The mother, pretending to be the faithful wife she's not, is having an affair, which threatens to divide the family into two.The sister, pretending to be a soldier she's not, is obsessed with the Civil war, a war that threatened to divide our country into two. The men in the family observe from the sidelines and wait, paralized, for the women they love to be exposed, for their own fates to be decided, for the delicate balance and unity of the family to return to it's norm. In the midst of looming consequences, both women must discover their true identities the hard way. We see all this through the eyes of the adolescent son. On the verge of adulthood, he begins to see his parents' flaws in a new, truthful light. We listen to his thoughtful narrative, we observe his actions, and we are there to see how he functions (or doesn't) in his own flawed relationships with his own best friend and his girlfriend. We see his trust in women falter accordingly. We see him forced into a position of power that he doesn't seem to want. This is not a book that is heavy on plot. It is about the ever-changing relationships and dynamics in a family full of bright, eccentric, intellectual/acedemic people. The novel has a surreal, voyeristic quality that allows the reader a prolonged look behind closed doors (and secret passwords) at a difficult year in the life of this remarkable family. It manages to beautifully weave in so much: war/political issues, gender/sexuality issues, Oedipal issues, identity issues, philosophy and reincarnation and... so much more as this story unfolds. It is about the fragility of the bonds that hold us together, and a son's harrowing realization of that fragility. The characters are flawed only in the ways that real people are. The narrative is flawed only in the way it would be if actually told by a coming-of-age son. The family is flawed only in the ways real families are. Hamilton's writing is flawless. Some have commented that the son's narrative is confusing - sometimes adult and sometimes child-like. I'd argue that this is how any one of us would describe something difficult from our past: Sometimes with the wisened perspective adulthood gives us, and sometimes reverting to the voice of that scared child of the past, still struggling to make sense of something not totally within our then-limited childhood comprehension. For the record, I've read "The Book of Ruth", "A Map of the World", "Short History of a Prince", and this, Hamilton's latest work. This is by far my favorite. It's not as intense as "Book of Ruth", and not as depressing as "A Map of the World". While I was a bit disappointed by "Short History of a Prince" for multiple reasons, I was delighted with "Disobedience". I'd highly recommend it.
35 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
ONE MORE TRIUMPH FOR JANE HAMILTON,
This review is from: Disobedience: A Novel (Hardcover)
Family dynamics and coming of age angst prevail in Disobedience, a stunning fourth novel from the gifted Jane Hamilton. With empathy and affection she enters her characters' lives to skillfully explore the ambiguous landscapes of human mind and heart.Disobedience assumes varying forms and guises in this chronicle of one year in the life of the Shaw family, beginning with 17-year-old Henry who inadvertently opens his mother's email to discover that she is having an impassioned affair with Richard Polloco, a Ukrainian violin maker. With his painful past of family terror during the Bolshevik Revolution, Polloco becomes to Beth Shaw "...a person with something real that had happened to him, that had wounded him. He was a person she might be able to comfort, a man she could lead out of the dark past, going from light to light to light." Online in her loving communiques to Polloco, pianist and solid mother Beth has become Liza38, an i.d. bestowed upon her by Henry when he introduced her to the mysteries of computer operation. He wanted her to have a name with some gusto and this "sounded like the code name of a blond spy with a sizable bust" rather than a "flat, no crackle name, Beth." The family is rounded out by father, Kevin, and thirteen-tear-old Elvira, a devoted, sometimes obsessive Civil War re-enactor who disguises herself as drummer boy Elviron to participate. She persists in always dressing in handmade Union uniforms, even to adding a clanking sword as she attends a family wedding. Elvira is encouraged in this pursuit by Kevin and worried over by Beth. When Kevin, a liberal leaning high school history teacher, is ousted from his job in Vermont, a place Henry views as his "deepest sense of home," the Shaws move to an upscale suburb in Chicago. Self described as "the heavyweight champion of depressed teenagehood," Henry wears long hair and wire rimmed specs. He is somewhat of a loner at his exclusive new school, and further alienated by the knowledge of Beth's unfaithfulness. Alternately fascinated and repelled, he knows he should not continue his "electronic eavesdropping," but he does. To him, her defection marks a loss of the childhood security that he once felt within his family circle. His response is further complicated by the fact that he has just experienced his first sexual encounter. Beth's confessions of guilt to an online friend do little to win Henry's understanding or forgiveness. There are times when he is nominally courteous to her at best, entering into dinner table conversations only to taunt or disparage Elvira. Some solace is found for Henry in his friendship with Karen, a schoolmate, who with her dyed black hair and bizarre clothing "looked as if she were a fifty-year-old masquerading as a teenager." Were he to confide his mother's infidelity to Karen, he imagines she might attribute it to a menopausal thing, saying, "Think of the last egg hobbling down the fallopian tube, shrieking for one last sperm." Ms. Hamilton has created an endearing figure in Henry, one who narrates his story with the insightfulness and bravado of an intelligent teenager. He is an embodiment of the difficulties encountered in growing up. Reluctantly he accompanies Kevin, Beth and Elvira to a reenactment of the Battle of Shiloh. It is here that unforeseen events alter the family's course forever. Deftly assured and almost preternaturally attuned to the feelings of a 17-year-old boy, Ms. Hamilton has again penned a story laced with humor, deep rooted love, and compassion. One could not find an abler guide to chart safe passage through the shoals of family life.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another good book by a great writer,
By Jim Bernhardt (Arlington, VA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Disobedience: A Novel (Hardcover)
Jane Hamilton has perfect pitch! Each word, each sentence, each character is in perfect harmony. The Shaw family of four is disobedient in terms of middle-class, upper-midwest morals. Elvira, the 13-year-old sister and most colorful character in the book, a cross-dressing civil war living historian, seeks every possible opportunity to get it wrong. The father, an amateur historian and professional teacher, lacks passion and presence. Elizabeth, the mother, recreates period music on the piano, has an affair with a violinist, and arranges trysts for Henry, her 17-year-old son. Henry reads his mother's e-mail. Sometimes, even great signers choose odd operas and inappropriate roles. Ms. Hamilton's choice of a seventeen-year-old male for her first person voice was odd. Certain scenes were nearly perfect. Most seemed much more like the son's voice as imagined by the mother. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina works. Hamilton as Henry doesn't. If you're looking for a book about a seventeen-year-old boy becoming a man, don't look here. If you're looking for some of the best writing in America, buy this book. Jane Hamilton is among the best writers in the country.
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