Disobedience

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.

Jane Hamilton came to Eau Claire, Wi in November promoting this book. After hearing her read the first chapter, I knew Disobedience had to be my selection for our January book club. Upon reading everyone else's reviews, I feel the major point of the book has been missed. The central theme is "deceptions". The deceipt of each character is woven into the fabric of the story: Beth Shaw's affair, Elvira Shaw's cross dressing, and Henry Shaw's spying on his mother through reading her email. One begins to wonder what Mr. Shaw's deception is......I feel that Jane Hamilton has surpassed herself with this novel. Each chapter slowly unveils the untruths of her character's lives. And of course we get only a one sided picture of each family member as seen through Henry's eyes. I can only wonder how fascinating this book would be if each character had a chapter and retold the story. We are given a glimpse of this in the Chapter on Shiloh. Henry relates the "outing" of Elvirnon in quite a different manner than his friend Karen does. I have read each of Ms. Hamilton's books and this one by far is my favorite. I love the construction of her sentences, and how she is able to convey so much meaning with so few words. I am definitely recommending this book to all of my friends, and anticipate our book club's get together.

"Disobedience", Jane Hamilton's searing new novel, has more than a passing resemblence to "Oedipus Rex". Henry Shaw, 17 going on 45, discovers his mother's email love affair with a man other than his father and seeks to observe and deconstruct the affair. His analysis of his mother's public and private behavior makes up much of this absorbing novel, but because this is the author of "Map of the World" you can be sure there will be more than a few other developments before the complex and heartbreaking book comes to a close. Only an accomplished writer can pull off a narrative like this one: we come to know Beth Shaw, Henry's mother, only through her son's eyes and the content of her email. Can we trust either of these sources to complete a full portrait of this woman? I think not, and yet Beth's ambiguity is one of the novel's main accomplishments. She is portrayed as both a fierce and uninvolved parent, a loving and deceptive wife and a complex and incomplete woman. We are as intrigued and confused as her son. "Disobedience" is one of the best books I have read this year. Anyone who loved "Map of the World" will love this one too.

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. 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 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 scapeges 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 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 pyschological action never lets up until the the last page is read.

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 o