SOURCE: Charles, Ron. “A Family Quartet out of Tune with Itself.” Christian Science Monitor 92, no. 245 (9 November 2000): 18.

In the following review, Charles analyzes the principal characters of Disobedience in terms of the relationship between technology and human nature.

Jane Hamilton has written a novel so disturbing that no one will enjoy reading it. But Disobedience is so provocative that you must.

Certain books capture the interaction between new technology and old human weakness at just the right moment. In The Octopus, Frank Norris used the sprawling railroads of 1901 to explore the ancient terror of losing control of one's destiny. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald plowed a flame-yellow car through a reckless fantasy of self-invention. In 2001, Arthur Clarke programmed the world's most modern computer to remind us of the old danger of hubris.

Someday, literary historians will look back at Disobedience and whisper, “You've got mail.” Could the...