SOURCE: Hutchings, Vicky. “Boy Talk.” New Statesman 130, no. 4528 (12 March 2001): 55-6.

In the following review, Hutchings emphasizes the interplay between the narrator's teenaged and adult perspectives in Disobedience.

Henry Shaw, the 17-year-old narrator of Jane Hamilton's Disobedience, is a modern-day Holden Caulfield. Using his mother's password (Liza38), he logs on to her computer and, like any teenager, is outraged to discover that she has “got mail”. “What was the old girl up to?” Why, she is having an affair with a man who lives in Wisconsin, no less.

But there's a potential problem. A Holden Caulfield would not be able to penetrate the torment and torture of his mum, Beth Shaw, and her lover, Richard Pollaco. Not without help, that is. What adolescent boy would understand why his mother talks endlessly about Pollaco at home? “She wouldn't bring him up if she was deceiving my father, if she was...