Disobedience by Naomi Alderman

I’m going to take the unusual step of reviewing a book. I read Disobedience because I missed the film, and then the book appeared on my BookBub list and I thought why not?

I didn’t find it a particularly easy read in some ways. The central setting is within the British Orthodox Jewish community in Hendon. There are elements of that I can relate to, clearly I’m British after all, but British Jewry is something I know very little about, and deeply Orthodox Jewry is, equally, something I know next to nothing about. Most of what I know about British Jewry is, kind of ironically, beautifully skewered within the pages of Disobedience and, although I’ve had Jewish friends over the years, none were practising so I didn’t learn anything about the religion from them. The only real exposure to Orthodox Jewry I really have is hearing about the ultra-orthodox community in Israel on the news and while I’m sure their statements are correctly presented, they are news snippets they aren’t an in depth analysis of the beliefs and social settings of the culture. That’s fair enough but it left me feeling very ignorant when I started reading this book. Of course, with a book, I could always stop, search and learn. All of that aside, let’s move on to discuss the actual book.

The book has a really clear structure. There’s a lesson from Orthodox, I’m going to say scripture here because I’m pretty sure it’s from a range of sources and I don’t know them all well enough to list them and be sure I’ve got them right. Then there’s a section from the wider community. Often, but not always, this is told from Esti's perspective, but we have others, Dovid, and more rarely others or even a detached “camera” following a group or similar. The final section of each chapter is from Ronit's perspective. She’s definitely our central character, I’m not sure protagonist is the right word for reasons I’ll dive into later.

Obviously each lesson is tied to the theme of the chapter. Some are lovely, the chapter about gossip has a lesson that I’ll remember and maybe even use in future. Some are frustratingly, self-servingly sexist. It’s hard to read them in any other way and while I don’t know how they play out in this community today the lessons made my hackles rise. (Want to know why men are superior to women? Apparently the Sun and the Moon used to shine with equal brightness but the Moon said to God that this was confusing, so God made the Sun brighter, the Moon dimmer. Thus men are more important than women… but it’s ok, at the end of times, the moon will be restored so it’s as bright as the sun again, and women will be restored to equality with men. 🙄) Then there are all the homophobic lessons that just made me feel both angry and tired at the same time. (These vary from the outfight “for a man to love another man or a woman to love another woman is sinful” to slightly different things like “you are not fully grown up until you have children”. Where’s that eyeroll emoji again…) One of the things that saved these chapters and kept me reading the book was that Ronit often shocked the people she didn’t like with outrageous stories - the lessons served more to give us context about why they landed as they did than anything else. Ronit clearly identifies as bi, although Esti doesn’t use the word, she clearly identifies as lesbian (there’s a conversation where she confirms that she fancies women and doesn’t fancy men for example) so it’s hard to read these lessons as something that most of the main characters or the author actually approve of.

Having mentioned a specific conversation I should say that it’s rare. All three main characters are British and reserved. Esti is talked about as “not quite suitable” because she’s so quiet and withdrawn. Dovid is, I think from the description, epileptic - although it could be a description of a very different form of migraine - and that keeps him quiet. Ronit is reserved and reflective. There are chapters with no dialogue at all. I’m not sure which chapter has the most but I’d be surprised if it has twenty lines of dialogue. This is a story told in the pauses, silences and thoughts. It’s in the reflections and the inner tensions. And then pointed comments, moments of joy, love, sarcasm or insight. No one here is a protagonist, they are all reactive, reflective, thinking about what they do even if they imagine doing gratifying things. Even when, for example, Ronit does act to shock, it’s a calculated choice, it will shock others but not harm her or those around her in any way. Even though the target of the shock acts out of spite against Ronit his actions aren’t really harmful, more pathetic really.

The author had said that this book is not autobiographical, but Ronit’s journey from Hendon to New York loosely mirrors hers, Ronit’s journey from Orthodoxy to not, from Orthodoxy to feminism also loosely mirrors hers. I don’t know if Naomi Alderman identifies as gay or not, authors are good at making stuff up after all, but I think she probably does. It reads too true, and two queer characters? Yeah.

For all I struggled with this book, I came away feeling like I'd been given a peak into a community that I knew existed but I knew next to nothing about. It’s not a complete view, it’s certainly not an impartial view but I still feel like I have a more than 0 feeling and understanding feeling about them, and that’s better than it was before.

The written story Ronit and Esti is odd, but haunting. There’s a chapter that talks about happiness and they both end up happy I think. But I can imagine stopping in a quiet moment, days or weeks from now, and thinking about them again. Just as the characters had jagged-edged realism, and the chapters have these moments of deep Jewish philosophy (even the ones I fundamentally disagree with often have beautiful stories, and thought-provoking around them) the book overall hits like that too. It takes two, intertwined, queer women in an Orthodox community and tells their stories, with respect to each other and the community around them, as well as some of the community’s stories in response to them. I feel as if I shouldn’t understand and even accept the places that they both find themselves in, but fundamentally I do. They’ve both made imperfect choices, compromises, but that’s adulthood. If I was 18 I wouldn’t but 40 years later I do. They’re both reasonably happy in their lives. Honestly, I can’t imagine being happy in either of them, albeit for very different reasons, and perhaps that makes it easier for me to accept the one that’s more mind-boggling.

Despite the initial struggles I’m really pleased I persevered. This wasn’t the easiest book, it’s not the best book, I’ve read not even this year. But it’s one of the more thought-provoking books I’ve read for a while, and that’s a good thing every now and again.

Having read this, I’m going to watch the film and see how that stacks up as an adaptation.