Review of Disobedience by Naomi Alderman

I wasn’t sure about this one when I found that it was the Book Group’s second selection for the month ( the first being Digging to America by Anne Tyler). The subject matter here was the Orthodox Jewish community in Hendon in North London and one particular family there. Don’t know much about Judaism and I can’t say that I’m driven to study the Torah. Fortunately, it was quite short and after starting it I did manage to get into it and found it quite interesting and informative.

Ronit is a bad girl! She is a lapsed Orthodox Jew living in New York, working as a financial analyst and having an affair with a married man. She does nothing to observe the niceties of her religious and ethnic persuasion. This is despite her father being a rabbi and Rav back home in Hendon.

The book starts off with the Rav dying and the whole community going into mourning for the statutory one week to one month period. Ronit is forced to return home and pay her respects.
The only reason she goes, so she tells herself, is to retrieve a pair of silver candlesticks she remembers from childhood

She stays with her cousin, Dovid, also a rabbi and his wife, Esti. Apparently, she had an unresolved adolescent, lesbian affair with Esti while she was at school. At the start Esti is very quiet and evidently still has strong feelings for Ronit. Fortunately, her husband, Dovid, is aware of her lesbian tendencies and is tolerant of them.

The book takes you through the Jewish ritual of Shabat and a Hesped which are central to their lives and mourning. The characters are very well drawn and although in many ways the culture is alien to me, it is brought alive by the writing. At the start of every chapter there are small sections of parables or lessons from the bible which could rankle but don’t and lead in nicely to the chapter.

One quirk or pretension depending on how you look at it is the difference in font used when the story is seen through the eyes of Ronit or the eyes of Esit. Obviously, this is designed to contrast the difference in observance of the religious customs by these two very different ladies. Towards the end they become somewhat blurred.

In the end, I would give the book 6 or 7 out of ten. Not a bad choice.