- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Viking (2 Mar 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0670916285
- ISBN-13: 978-0670916283
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.8 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 393,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Disobedience
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More About the Author
Product Description
Hilary Mantel
’Sharp, funny and poignant’
The Independent
‘A fresh, feisty peek at the hidden world of London’s Orthodox Jewish Community’
Inside This Book
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Opens up a whole new world and delievers a compulsive read,
By
This review is from: Disobedience (Hardcover)
This might not be what a forty-something bloke would normally read - a lesbian exploration of friendship and morality set in the heart of London's orthodox Jewish community - but I loved it. It is suffused with warmth, the characters feel fully formed, genuine and likeable, their dilemmas real. I felt I was getting an insight for another world, one packed with rigid religious rules alien to me, but also the sort of petty morality, gossip and bitchiness that are universal. Step aside Monica Ali and Brick Lane, it's time for north London to have its moment in the sun - and Disobedience in the book to do it.
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Witty, brilliant writing and an insight into another world,
By A Customer
This review is from: Disobedience (Hardcover)
Ronit, a young orthodox jewish woman from Hendon escapes her past and moves to New York where she does everything a orthodox jewish woman shouldn't - she wears trousers, has sex with people who aren't her husband - even someone else's, smokes and drinks. Her father, the rabbi, then dies and she returns to go to his funeral and she returns to everything she escaped from - the petty jealousies, the stifling community and also to a childhood sweetheart. I loved this book - it provided an insight into a world and a religion that I knew very little about and I loved the characters and found it moving and engrossing. It has been lauded as the next Brick Lane but I enjoyed it much more than Brick Lane as I found the characters less stereotypical and I loved the warm wit and the great writing.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Perseverance is Required,
By Mrs. K. A. Wheatley "katywheatley" (Leicester, UK) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Disobedience (Paperback)
The book jacket compares Alderman to Zadie Smith. I think this is unfair to both authors and the readers. Smith has a knack for wry humour and a deep understanding of what it is to be an alien in your own country, yet there is a great affection for her characters and geography always present. Alderman has some of this, but it is much patchier and less defined than Smith's work. She also has other gifts which are overlooked by this sweeping comparison. Alderman deals with the essence of what it is to be Jewish, and how to relate someone's fragile sense of humanity to the permanent solidity of 'God'. This seems to me to be the ovearching theme of the book. Each chapter is headed with passages from Jewish scriptures which are then discussed in a kind of mini sermon. These are dynamic and very interesting. Where the book falls down, for me, is in the characterisation. The central characters, Ronit, Esti and Dovid, who are locked in a peculiar and sympathetic love triangle, are intriguing but seem quite shadowy, subsumed by the issues with which Alderman wrestles: how to remain true to orthodox Judaism in the modern world, exile, what it is to be a Jewish woman, what it is to be a lesbian and a Jewish woman. These are big questions and ideas in what is a fairly short book, and as such the book often comes across as fragmented and bitty. There is lots to admire, but this is not, to me, a finished work. I would definitely read more of her work, as I want to see how she progresses as a writer. She shows great promise.
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