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.

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.

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.

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.

I guess we will never know why Bernice Rubens choose silver-fish nightmares over spiders or snakes or some other creature that has bad press. But silver-fish, not spiders or snakes haunt Norman, son of Rabbi Zweck the poor unfortunate nucleus of this story. He who is trying to understand why he happens to be surrounded by such a dysfunctional family. Read his life and find out the events that cause his family fall apart and his son to loose his sanity. Find out why at the end he feels that he has been such a failure. Do this and I hope, like me, that you will feel at the end that you have read a beautifully written book. Why do we not hear more about this novel; how come I have missed it before now? Why is this not top of the school list long with Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies

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.

This book is a model of simple, subtle, seductive writing. The Elected Member is Norman, the extraordinary but increasingly troubled son of a Lithuanian Jewish Rabbi in 1960s London. When we first meet him he is delusional and distraught, and his father and sister have to take the extraordinarily difficult decision to have him committed to a psychiatric hospital. As we journey with them we discover more and more of the family story which has brought them to this place of despair. Bernice Rubens writes concisely but powerfully, and we are drawn in to a place where we care deeply for these characters. She won the Booker Prize in 1970 for The Elected Member, and 45 years later this little gem of a book deserves a new audience.

An amazingly entertaining account of a disfunctional family

The book was easy to read and not knowing anything about Jewish culture was a good introduction, although I did have to research some of the Hebrew terms used. The story centres around mental health and drug issues in a dysfunctional family, asking you to question what is acceptable. The characters are all accessible and whilst not all are likeable, you can at least understand their motivation.

I have to read this saving it up. Thanks

Brilliant story. Clever. Intriguing. Funny/sad. Couldn't put it down.

Reuben's a most insightful intelligent author,love her books.Thoroughly enjoyed,as have all her books

Darkly humerous, a great read.

Great story, great writer.

This is a beautifully written, sometimes funny but mainly depressing story about a Jewish family in East London and the burden of secrets, guilt, despair and madness each one carries. While all the characters are well-drawn, the anguished Rabbi Zweck moved me especially and made me give the book four stars.

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