SOURCE: Reynolds, Susan Salter. Review of Disobedience, by Jane Hamilton. Los Angeles Times Book Review (15 October 2000): 11.

In the following review, Reynolds assesses the characters of Disobedience in light of typical family relations in modern society.

Henry [in Disobedience] is 17, a bit of a hacker but not completely solitary. His sister Elvira is 13 and obsessed with the Civil War. In reenactments that she lives to participate in, she pretends to be a boy. Henry's mother, Beth Shaw, is a folk musician; his father, the socialist, teaches history at a high school in Chicago, where the family moved from Vermont. Henry learns by reading his mother's e-mail that she is having a passionate affair with a violin maker. For an entire year, he reads and prints her e-mails, saying nothing. He's got his own dramas to play out, a lovely girlfriend in another state named Lily, his certain-to-be-gay sister, his...