Disobedience

Wow. Reading this book reminded me of why I like Jane Hamilton's writing so much. This is the story of a family, narrated by the teenage son, Henry. Henry has just discovered that his mother is having an affair, and this affects his relationship with her. Throughout the book, he sometimes refers to his mother as Beth, as Mrs. Shaw or as Liza to reflect the different aspects of her life or personality, as he perceives it. He is, in fact, coming to see his mother as a person beyond being "Mom". Add a sister who pretends to be a boy in order to participate in civil war re-enactments and an almost pathologically optimistic, oblivious father and this story takes you into a world where Henry learns about secrets, hidden strengths and the show more complex issues of who we really are. show less

Henry Shaw is seventeen and a high school senior. Even though he has had a rather unusual and carefree childhood in rural Vermont, he considers himself part of an ordinary and happy family. It is only after he moves with his family to Chicago that he discovers, through inadvertently accessing his mother’s email, that she is in love with a man other than his father. Should Henry confront her or must he suffer silently? His new knowledge of his mother’s behavior is a burden for Henry. While he agonizes over this, his parents seem to be quietly waging their own war over Elvira, Henry’s younger sister, who is slowly become a living re-enactment of a Civil War soldier.

Disobedience is a novel of modern times and yet of an old problem. show more It focuses on a high-tech way of not only conducting, but also monitoring, a less than desirable relationship. The characters are so authentic that at least one of them is sure to be reminiscent of a real life person! Hamilton does the voice of Henry so well that it’s hard to realize that he is a fictional character and not a real young man struggling with a terrible family problem. All of the characters are graced with passion and humor which shine through the pages.

Hamilton highlights the way in which one particular family scapegoats a particularly vulnerable family member. Often this happens in real life--the act of scapegoating--even though family problems are often system problems, those having to do with relationships between family members. Although some readers may view Elvira’s antics as humorous, they are quite the opposite. In this story, Elvira suffers a great deal of torment from her mother and brother for an interest in which she has a great passion. Hamilton brings great insight into family relationships and into a teenager’s way of thinking. Teens often think they have things figured out, but they don’t have enough life experience to truly understand complex situations. Some readers may be put off by the slow-moving the plot, but the psychological action never lets up until the last page is read. show less

I really wanted to like this book but I disliked the narrator so much that I finally ditched it midway through. I tried, though. The writing was excellent.

Every time I read one of Jane Hamilton's books I love her writing even more. Who else can wrap you into a world, defining people so clearly that you expect to look around and see them at the coffee shop?

"It was possibly because he had no ego that he was more fully himself than anyone else I could name."

Despite being narrated by a teenage boy, this feels like a woman's book, heavy on relationships and family dynamics. Hamilton's writing is polished and highly readable, sometimes ingenious and truly funny. I appreciated the extended Civil War metaphor, and Elvira's/Elvirnon's part in it. Ultimately, though, I didn't feel the characters deeply enough to make me want to rush back to their story.

Most people don't really like this book, which is about a family with some unusual and unlikeable behaviours. Even if people do like some aspects of the book, they almost always don't find the family attractive or even realistic. I liked the book because I looked at the family and found it was like looking in a mirror. What does that say about myself and my family?

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.