The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens

Published by Abacus: London, 2013.
Originally published 1969.

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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