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רומן ביכורים. והנה הביקורת:
True to the spirit of its title, Naomi Alderman's Disobedience (Viking £12.99, pp288) revels in unconventionality. Its backdrop is the Orthodox Anglo-Jewish community. The passion that suffuses its pages is lesbian. And while it touches on romance and self-determination, it is ultimately a tale of love lost and a paean to the contentment that self-sacrifice can bring. The novel centres on a threesome: Ronit, the renegade daughter of a celebrated rabbi, her illicit school sweetheart, Esti, and Esti's timid husband, Dovid, who also happens to be Ronit's cousin and her father's protege. Fleeing the constraints of close-knit, observant Hendon, Ronit has made a life in New York, where she works as a financial analyst, beds her married boss and checks in weekly with a shrink. A born-again secularist, she views religion as 'a peculiar form of obsessive-compulsive disorder'. It's been six years since she last spoke to her father but, when news of his death reaches her, she boards a plane, bound for a homecoming that will scandalise the community and wreak havoc in Esti and Dovid's marriage, forcing her to confront some difficult truths about herself along the way. A self-proclaimed 'drama queen', Ronit narrates alternate scenes, her bolshie 'heys', 'yeahs' and 'sos' counterpointing Alderman's contemplative third-person narrative. Writing light is tougher than it seems, however, and it's in the shallows - those portions where we're stuck with Ronit's sometimes grating voice - that this accomplished novel can founder. Like Monica Ali's Brick Lane, Disobedience is a debut with anthropological appeal, offering a glimpse of a closeted and surprisingly English nook of British society. Each chapter starts with a snippet of sacred text, whose themes - the passing of time, the might of words, the challenges of marriage - elegantly shape the action that follows, making for a book of burnished depth. It would be easy to mock the way that Esti and her neighbours submit to such ancient and complex laws but, while Alderman has a bold comic touch, she consistently reaches beyond the obvious. As even Ronit concludes: 'There's something fierce and old and tender about that life that keeps on calling me back.'
עוד לא יצא לי לקרוא. למי יש זמן?...
