Well, folks, this one has everything you could ever want out of a Booker winner: dysfunctional families, cultural identity (Jewish), drug addiction, hints of both brother-sister incest and homosexuality, and death. That's damn impressive. And it was only the second book to win the prize -- clearly it Set The Tone for the decades to come.
(Disclosure time: so much time has passed since I created this blog post and wrote the above paragraph that my opinions & memories of this book, never too strong in the first place, have dwindled away somewhat.)
The Elected Member is about Norman Zweck, his sister Bella, and his father Rabbi Zweck. Nominally the narration is Norman's, centering on his drug addiction and the psychotic delusions resulting from his withdrawal, but it gradually expands to envelop the entire family and their own histories, secret struggles, and resentments. It's not a fun book at all, but it's very well done.
Given my own interests and background, what I found the most impressive was the way Rubens portrayed mental illness from the inside out, showing the dreadful, chilling pathos of delusion: the way irrational beliefs can be held by otherwise intelligent people, the ways in which they cling unshakably to the results of their own brain chemistry, they ways in which they rationalise and rebuild reality so that it fits in with what they know to be irrevocably true. She shows the inevitable anger that develops against anyone trying to deny that reality, and the helplessness of anyone on the outside, seeing the psychosis for what it is but unable to break through. This portrait of drug addiction and delusion alone makes the book worth reading.
The title of the book relates to the family context of this individual tragedy; the metaphor is that Norman's condition makes him the single member of the family who has been 'elected' to be both scapegoat and victim as a result of the family's collective history, the events that led to Rabbi Zweck's unhappiness and Bella's bitter loneliness and their estrangement from Norman's eldest sister. Their guilt dictates how they react to Norman's condition and use it to streamline and reflect their own suffering:
The Elected Member is about Norman Zweck, his sister Bella, and his father Rabbi Zweck. Nominally the narration is Norman's, centering on his drug addiction and the psychotic delusions resulting from his withdrawal, but it gradually expands to envelop the entire family and their own histories, secret struggles, and resentments. It's not a fun book at all, but it's very well done.
Given my own interests and background, what I found the most impressive was the way Rubens portrayed mental illness from the inside out, showing the dreadful, chilling pathos of delusion: the way irrational beliefs can be held by otherwise intelligent people, the ways in which they cling unshakably to the results of their own brain chemistry, they ways in which they rationalise and rebuild reality so that it fits in with what they know to be irrevocably true. She shows the inevitable anger that develops against anyone trying to deny that reality, and the helplessness of anyone on the outside, seeing the psychosis for what it is but unable to break through. This portrait of drug addiction and delusion alone makes the book worth reading.
The title of the book relates to the family context of this individual tragedy; the metaphor is that Norman's condition makes him the single member of the family who has been 'elected' to be both scapegoat and victim as a result of the family's collective history, the events that led to Rabbi Zweck's unhappiness and Bella's bitter loneliness and their estrangement from Norman's eldest sister. Their guilt dictates how they react to Norman's condition and use it to streamline and reflect their own suffering:
They could not bear to make him miserable, though if she were honest, it was her own pain and her father's that was unsupportable. And so they had both entered Norman's derangement, making it workable, tidying it even, making it all 'nice'. They were both equally guilty. She knew in her heart, it was better for strangers to look after him. Her answer over the years to Norman's sickness had been that he was doing it on purpose to drive them all crazy. She had to be angry with him. It was the surest hold on her own sanity. If a mind wavered, it was best to keep the kin at bay.As often happens with these depressing, clever, well-crafted books that end up on the Booker list, I was slow to get into it, engrossed while reading it, thoughtful for a day afterwards, and then more or less shook off my memory of the emotions it inspired within me. I can't say I loved it, I can't say I'd press it into the hands of anyone looking for recommendations, but I'm glad it was on my list.
