Jane Hamilton, author of the best-selling novels The Book Of Ruth and A Map Of The World, continues to shine in her latest book, Disobedience (Doubleday, 2000, $24.95). This story of the Shaw family, of marital infidelity and the redeeming power of loyalty, offers a glimmering example of both fine writing and keen artistry.

Henry Shaw, the teenaged son of Kevin and Beth Shaw as well as the older brother of Elvira, is the narrator of Disobedience. Comfortable in his home life — his mother is a musician specializing in antique music, Kevin teaches history, and Elvira is a die-hard Civil War re-enactor who calls herself Elviron while dressing as a young boy soldier — Henry discovers via his mother’s e-mail that she is carrying on an affair with a violin maker named Richard Polloco.

The effect of this knowledge on Henry’s life — he keeps looking at his mother’s email — acts as a mirror for Henry to examinine his own life and the lives of those around him. He does a remarkable job of understanding his mother’s infatuation with the violin maker and of her place in the family; he sees his father in a more heroic light, realizing that Kevin has a patience and love for his wife possessed by few men; he gives us wonderfully humorous looks at his younger sister, whose infatuation with the Civil War becomes so intense that she cooks cornmeal on a bayonet over the electric range, sleeps on a blanket on the floor, and dresses as a soldier most of the day.

With the exception of Richard Polloco himself, who is never quite “real” in this book, the other characters are also vividly drawn. Lily, Kevin’s first love, “... had long blond hair that for daytime purposes she wore in a bun or two braids. When she let it down, it was as if Anne of Green Gables had morphed into a sex kitten.” Then there is Karen, his best friend in high school, who looked “... as if she were a 50-year-old masquerading as a teenager, a being who had come down to us from another sphere, to show us the way.” There are the women in Beth’s book club, women whom Hamilton gently spoofs as they argue about men, sex, raising children, and life in general.

Where Hamilton truly excels is in her portrait of Henry Shaw. I have known teenage boys who could have authored this book, who fit this character perfectly, and in creating the voice and person of Henry, Hamilton reveals what great skills she possesses. Henry’s wry skepticism, his sense of the absurd, and his ability to endure his family, often with a sense of humor — that is quite an accomplishment for many teens — help make Disobedience such a fine book.

Besides giving us wonderful characters, Hamilton offers tiny gems of philosophy and observation as well. Near the beginning of the book, Henry tells us that “I was taken from Vermont before I could think to leave it for myself, and so for me Wellington is my ideal, my old backyard there my deepest sense of home.” This is a true and beautiful description of the emotions of any child who leaves a home before they are ready to go of their own accord. Later, Henry writes in regard to Marcia, a professor in the book club who has been artificially inseminated, that she doubts whether her expected baby will actually meet her expectations “... because I knew, even before Richard Polloco came on the scene, that no flesh-and-blood individual, no actual person, can satisfy the kind of lofty desires we can’t help harboring.”

The saving graces to Disobedience, what prevents it from being another dreary attack on marriage and the family, are Hamilton’s sense of humor, sense of truth, and feeling for the vagaries of humanity. Nearly any page would do to illustrate these qualities, but the following passage, taken just a few pages from the end of the book, shows us Hamilton at her best. Henry tells a young woman at college, Madeline, the story of his family and of his father’s love for his mother. “He sounds sick,” Madeline replies, and Henry writes:

“I did not go into a cheap meditation on unconditional love, didn’t tell her that as a child I instinctively believed in such a thing. As a teenager I doubted. As a man, on rare occasions, I am willing, I think, to give it the benefit of the doubt. I like to imagine that I have seen its work. I have seen it personified, in Vermont town meetings, an older woman, usually it is, in the back row, unswerving, speaking without rancor against all the others, saying the truth, the sort of truth that will never work in our slow and cumbersome system of compromise and in a country of free enterprise.”

This is a rich, lovely, and high-spirited book. Enjoy!
(Jeff Minick owns Saints and Scholars Bookstore on Main Street in Waynesville.)

 

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