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Disobedience
Jane Hamilton. Anchor Books: 2001 (paperback). ISBN: 0385720467. 288 pages.
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Tired of mother-daughter books? How about a mother-son book? How about a book
about a mother's marital infidelity told from the point of view of her 17-year-old son? Sound like fun? Actually, it is!
Jane Hamilton isn't exactly known for her light touch; however, her latest page-turning novel is filled with quirky characters that lighten the load of what could be a burdensome story. Hamilton writes once more about what happens to people
when things go terribly wrong (think of the poor woman in A Map of the World), but here, the story is told by Henry
Shaw, who discovers his mother Beth's affair while reading her email. It's a 21st-century twist on a very old story, and
Hamilton's narrator makes it fresh. At first, Henry's voice seems impossibly sophisticated, but quickly we realize that
while Henry may know a lot, he hasn't experienced enough about life to know as much as he thinks he knows. Henry's depressed
mother is a musician, his idealistic father is a history teacher at a prestigious private high school in Chicago, and his
sister, Elvira, perhaps the most complicated character in the novel, is a thirteen-year-old Civil War fanatic who dresses
only in "authentic" soldier uniforms. This novel has an unusually powerful ending and a great cast of characters, each
drawn with precision and care, each learning something about love and loss along the way. Henry looks back and tells his
mother's story because as he puts it, it's "the only one I seem to have in me. . . .It is always about her."
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