The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens
Published by Abacus: London, 2013.
After the relaxed
pace and plotlessness of Saville, it
is very noticeable to me how quickly The
Elected Member begins. Norman Zweck has hallucinations of silver-fish
crawling all over him, and is committed to a mental hospital by his father and
sister in the first few chapters. Once there, he begins trying to score drugs
from another of the patients rather than face his own addictions, while his
father and sister battle their guilt for committing him.
Everyone in
The Elected Member is carrying
immense guilt and each has it manifest in different ways. Norman’s drug
addiction and mental issues arise from guilt over influencing the relationships
of various family members and friends in negative ways, His sister Bella metaphorically
refuses to grow up because of guilt over not supporting Norman more and over
their brief incestuous tryst when younger, their younger married sister carries
guilt over abandoning the family through her unhappy marriage, Norman’s father,
Rabbi Zweck, carries guilt over not standing up to his wife more, and manifests
it by desperately trying to “heal” his son.
Yet the
guilt the family carry is not only a personal guilt. The title of “elected
member” is first applied to Norman, being the member of the family firstly to
be elected to succeed (in his early adult life he is a successful lawyer) and
also the one who has now been “elected” to insanity. But near the end of the
novel, Norman reflects on the parallels between the guilt he carries based on
his “election” to be special, and the guilt he feels the Jewish people as a
whole carry based on their election to be the chosen people of God. This adds
an extra layer to The Elected Member that
makes it far more interesting then the, admittedly already quite interesting,
surface story.
The Elected Member continues the common theme of Booker books
being fairly unpleasant or sordid in patches, but is the first book in a while
to make its themes and metaphors obvious enough within the pages of the novel
itself to be picked up by the average reader. Although I wouldn’t say it is an
“enjoyable” book, I never-the-less enjoyed it over all, which is still a fairly
novel occurrence thus far.
Completed 26 September 2017.
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