The Elected Member

We just read this book in our book club and we are all pleasantly surprised at what great discussion it generated. While reading the book, one can get a sense that parallel plots are orbiting the primary plot all the time but you never can quite put your finger on exactly what they are. As a group we all picked up on different concepts that once someone said it we would agree at how right on the person was and how we didn't come up with it on our own. After the discussion we all wanted to read the book again with our new insight into the book.

Entertaining tale about a weird family.

The Elected Member of this novel is Norman Zweck, the cherished high-achieving son of a Jewish family in 1960s London. But the book opens with him addicted to amphetamines, his legal career in tatters as he hallucinates. His experiences in a mental hospital unfold and with them we come to understand how he got to this point; family secrets and a tragedy that scarred him for life. Both moving and humourous, this is an interesting and unique work.

Once again Bernice Rubens proves to be a complex and thoroughly honest writer. She spares no one. There is no icing on this cake!

This Booker Prize winning novel about a close-knit but dysfunctional Jewish family is set in the East End of London in the 1960s. Norman Zweck, the golden son of a rabbi and his late wife, whose promising career as a barrister has been derailed by drug use and mental illness brought on by his mother's incessant demands and his personal failings, is slowly becoming unhinged -- again. He spends his days in his parents' old bedroom, locked away from his father and younger sister, popping amphetamine pills in a futile attempt to keep his demons at bay. His father and younger unmarried sister Bella, who deeply love Norman but fear his ever more worrisome outbursts, work together to place him in a mental institution, in a last ditch effort to get him back to his old self. As he recuperates in the institution, the three members of the family, and Norman's estranged sister Esther, reflect on how they reached this critical point. Past actions, indiscretions, and tragic decisions haunt each of them, but none more than Norman. The Zuckers attempt to reconcile their differences once and for all, as Norman descends further into madness and as his father's health begins to fail. "The Elected Member" was a enjoyable read, filled with humor despite its tragic elements, and hope in the face of despair and crisis.

This book is not a long read by normal standards (about 240 pages), but it says so much in so few words! Because I decided this year to make the Booker Prize winning books part of my reading challenge, i came upon this one, which was the second winner of the prize. I cannot say enough about this book. It depicts the tragedy and hopelessness that occurs in a family if one of their number is suffering from drug addiction. As is depicted so well in this book, the whole family goes down the same rabbit hole that the addict does. If you add a miserably dysfunctional family to that pot, the damage is even greater. The book is written from the standpoint of an Orthodox Jewish culture, so it can be difficult for non-Jewish people to get all of the correct connotations that this author puts forward, but the story is so powerful, and so well-written, that I felt that I understood the context fairly well. The boundless human understanding, faith and forgiveness shown by Rabbi Zweck is the glue that holds this family together after their matriarch died. The ending, though heartbreaking, shows a family on its way to recovery. It gives us hope for the future as well. If you love literary fiction, with a very human context, I highly recommend that you get your hands on this book. It was a total revelation for me. This is a very worthy winner of the esteemed Booker Prize.

Bernice Rubens' novels are difficult to find here in America but are definitely worth reading. The Elected Member is about the Zweck family, a well-to-do Orthodox Jewish family in England, and how it slowly disintegrated because of their firm hold onto their culture. The novel centers on the eldest son Norman who once was a top lawyer, but had to be admitted to a mental instituion after suffering a nervous breakdown. But what causes his breakdown? Was it his parents who simply hold onto him too tightly? His 2 sisters whom he committed crimes of the heart against? Rubens expertly transport us to the Zwecks' family past and slowly reveals how past mistakes can come back to haunt everyone in a family.

his is an impeccably written, deeply insightful, at times hilarious but mostly totally depressing story about a pious Jewish family in East London and the burden of secrets, guilt and remorse that each member carries. Not one of them is innocent, to a larger or lesser degree all have contributed to each other’s miserable, stunted lives, and none more than Norman whose descent into lunacy is brilliantly described. For me it was the father, soft-hearted, timid, vulnerable, faithful old Rabbi Zweck who really made this story heart-breaking and unforgettable.

Norman's dysfunctional Jewish family drives him to take drugs, and when Norman is sectioned we find out he has more than a few skeletons in the cupboard himself... I hesitated to pick this up but it was a really great novel; well written and fresh as a daisy (considering it is nigh on 50 years old). Rubens has a deft touch and the admirable ability to tell a humorous yet life-affirming story. A memorable quick read.

Darkly humerous, a great read.

Manchmal vielleicht etwas schwieriger zu lesen, als ihre übrigen Bücher, zeigt es doch einen interessanten Einblick in eine Irrenanstalt. Packend geschrieben.

A great book - definitely deserves 5 stars. But there was no reminder that an old-style cheap paperback edition might be very poorly produced. Here, poor quality paper and type-face make the book quite difficult to read.