Disobedience - Softcover

Hamilton, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385601913 ISBN 13: 9780385601917

Publisher: Doubleday, 2000

Synopsis

Seventeen year old Henry Shaw learns of his mother's passionate affair when he stumbles across her email correspondence with her lover. His image of her is shattered. His younger sister Elvira is stuck in 1862 with her Civil War infantry regiment. Displaced from Vermont to Chicago, each member of the family finds their dreams hard

About this title

Review

A wayward wife, an oedipally obsessed e-mail snoop, a pint-sized Civil War re-enactor (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. They do possess a computer, however, 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 or by 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 sombre 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 fervour. 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

Review

'As a portrait of the everyday effects of infidelity it is unsettlingly acute' -- Terence Blacker, The Sunday Times

'Both delightful and profound. For lovers of writers such as Shields and Tyler, Jane Hamilton is unmissable' -- Helen Stevenson, Daily Mail

'It is hard to separate what happens on Hamilton's pages from real life - that is the hallmark of an extraordinary talent' -- Irish Tatler

'Jane Hamilton is the chronicler of family relationships...lush, easy to read, intense and brimming with dangerous emotions' -- Nicci Gerrard, Observer

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385601913
• ISBN 13: 9780385601917
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288