Disobedience: A Novel [Paperback]

Jane Hamilton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2001

From Jane Hamilton, author of the beloved New York Times bestsellers A Map of the World and The Book of Ruth, comes a warmly humorous, poignant novel about a young man, his mother's e-mail, and the often surprising path of infidelity.

Henry Shaw, a high school senior, is about as comfortable with his family as any seventeen-year-old can be. His father, Kevin, teaches history with a decidedly socialist tinge at the Chicago private school Henry and his sister attend. His mother, Beth, who plays the piano in a group specializing in antique music, is a loving, attentive wife and parent. Henry even accepts the offbeat behavior of his thirteen-year-old sister, Elvira, who is obsessed with Civil War
reenactments and insists on dressing in handmade Union uniforms at inopportune times.

When he stumbles on his mother's e-mail account, however, Henry realizes that all is not as it seems. There, under the name Liza38, a name that Henry innocently established for her, is undeniable evidence that his mother is having an affair with one Richard Polloco, a violin maker and unlikely paramour who nonetheless has a very appealing way with words and a romantic spirit that, in Henry's estimation, his own father woefully lacks.

Against his better judgment, Henry charts the progress of his mother's infatuation, her feelings of euphoria, of guilt, and of profound, touching confusion. His knowledge of Beth's secret life colors his own tentative explorations of love and sex with the ephemeral Lily, and casts a new light on the arguments-usually focused on Elvira-in which his parents regularly indulge. Over the course of his final year of high school, Henry observes each member of the family, trying to anticipate when they will find out about the infidelity and what the knowledge will mean to each of them.

Henry's observations, set down ten years after that fateful year, are much more than the "old story" of adultery his mother deemed her affair to be. With her inimitable grace and compassion, Jane Hamilton has created a novel full of gentle humor and rich insights into the nature of love and the deep, mysterious bonds that hold families together.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A wayward wife, an Oedipally obsessed e-mail snoop, a pint-sized Civil War reenactor (oops, make that living historian), and a cheerfully oblivious cuckold comprise the Shaws of Chicago, the decidedly quirky characters of Jane Hamilton's fourth novel, Disobedience. An unlikely family to fall prey to the vagaries of modern life, the Shaws are consumed with clog dancing, early music, and the War Between the States. But they do possess a computer, and when 17-year-old Henry stumbles into his mother's e-mail account and epistolary evidence of her affair with a Ukrainian violinist, he becomes consumed with this glimpse into her life as a woman, not simply a mother.

To picture my mother a lover, I had at first to break her in my mind's eye, hold her over my knee, like a stick, bust her in two. When that was done, when I had changed her like that, I could see her in a different way. I could put her through the motions like a jointed puppet, all dancy in the limbs, loose, nothing to hold her up but me.

While his mother (whom he refers to variously as Mrs. Shaw, Beth, and her e-mail sobriquet, Liza38), dallies with her pen pal, whom she calls "the companion of my body, the guest of my heart," Henry experiences his own sexual awakening; his 13-year-old sister, Elvira, retreats into gender-bending historical fantasy; and their father remains determinedly absorbed in pedagogical responsibilities.

Ironically (and not completely convincingly) narrated by an adult Henry, Disobedience has a rollicking tone somewhat at odds with the somber prospects that loom for this family. A very worldly teenager in some ways, despite the hippie wholesomeness of his family, Henry tells his tale in abundant, almost flowery prose, imagining his mother's private life with elegiac fervor. As in her earlier A Map of the World, Jane Hamilton writes with affection and insight about the darker side of apparently ordinary Midwestern folks. --Victoria Jenkins --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Credit Hamilton with courage, virtuosity and a remarkable ability to reflect inner lives. Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, was the unsparing story of a girl trapped in woeful circumstances; the protagonist of her second, The Map of the World, was a woman responsible for a child's death; the narrator of The Short History of a Prince was a gay man. Here she again explores family bonds and tensions, the demands of sexuality and the ethics of betrayal (not an oxymoron)Dthis time from the point of view of a teenager who discovers that his mother is having an affair. Henry Shaw is a high school senior when he intercepts e-mail messages between his mother, Beth, a musician and specialist in ancient music, and violin maker Richard Pollico. As he secretly eavesdrops on the liaison between "Liza38" and "Rpol," Henry's emotions, ranging from horror to fear of abandonment to rage to deep sadness, take on a new dimension when he himself falls in love with a girl he meets in summer camp. Meanwhile, his generally bemused and patient father, Kevin, a high school history teacher, seems unaware of Beth's infidelity, since he spends much of his time coaching Henry's rebellious sister, Elvira, 13, who is obsessed with her desire to join a Civil War reenactment disguised as a boy. A mirror image of A Short History's protagonist, Walter, at the same age, Elvira displays an unhappiness with her gender that causes stress in the Shaw's marriage. As she has amply demonstrated before, Hamilton knows the nuances of domestic relationships and the landscape of teenage uncertainty. Henry's voice is exactly right: he's a thoughtful, intelligent boy whose hormones are sending him confusing messages, and whose tendency is to mock both parents with typical teen sardonic humor. Henry's funny quips are actually quite sad, because they mask his sorrow at the severing of his close bond with his mother, and his discomfort at secretly being aware of her illicit passion. Beth's joyous reaction to physical love and her anguish at how her behavior, if revealed, might affect her family, are likewise rendered with compassion. In a miracle of empathy, Hamilton manages to grant psychological validity to all the members of this ordinary-seeming but emotionally distracted family, and to strike the reader's heart with her tender evocation of both human fallibility and our ability to recover from heartbreaking choices. Author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (July 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385720467
• ISBN-13: 978-0385720465
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #272,256 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jane Hamilton is the author of The Book of Ruth, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction, and A Map of the World, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and named one of the top ten books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, the Miami Herald, and People. Both The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World have been selections of Oprah's Book Club. Her following work, The Short History of a Prince, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998, her novel Disobedience was published in 2000, and her last novel When Madeline Was Young was a Washington Post Best Book of 2006. She lives in and writes in an orchard farmhouse in Wisconsin.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Striking storylines, striking parallels - amazing!, January 8, 2001

By 

Kathryn A. Goodman "kathryngoodman" (suburb of Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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, October 27, 2000

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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, November 26, 2000

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.