Bernice Rubens Summary

Bernice Rubens has written eleven novels, most of which have been well received by the critics. Her fourth, The Elected Member (1969), won the Booker Prize, Britain's most important and most coveted ... Read more

Critical Essay by John Coleman Stripped of the heavy riddles, which it quickly is, [Set on Edge] turns out to be the story of a love-hate relationship between a Jewish mother and daughter somewhere i... Read more

Critical Essay by Angela Huth Miss Rubens, no new literary figure, has written ten novels; she won the Booker Prize in 1970, and was short-listed for it in 1978. You would think, then, she was bound ... Read more

Critical Essay by Richard Deveson It is 1835. Reuben and Benjamin, both aged ten, uncle and nephew though they have been brought up as brothers, are in peril of forcible 25-year conscription into the... Read more

Critical Essay by Robert Greenfield In her 12th novel, Bernice Rubens has abandoned the small canvas for the large. Discarding the relatively modest yet always human situations that previously have b... Read more

Critical Essay by Anne Tyler ["Favours"] is a study of an elderly spinster who becomes addicted to the services of a paid lover. (p. 28) Bernice Rubens has a firm, brisk style, but s... Read more

Critical Essay by Nicholas Shrimpton Spring Sonata is neither a collection of gloomy gynaecological horrors nor a solemn attempt to create a convincing foetal consciousness. Instead it is an exuberan... Read more

Critical Essay by The Times Literary Supplement The Jewish mother has been ridiculed and blamed before. In The Elected Member she is savaged—after her death, it is true, though the author stil... Read more

Critical Essay by The Times Literary Supplement The characters Bernice Rubens creates in her novels generally feel violently and venomously and on a grand scale. Their emotions are "urgent�... Read more

Critical Essay by Ferdinand Mount Black farce very often thrives on stock characters and stock incidents. The grotesque needs the familiar to bounce off. Yet the presence of too many such stock eleme... Read more

Critical Essay by Martha Duffy I Sent a Letter to My Love is a short, winning novel, almost an entertainment. (p. 46) Rubens, who has written several other novels, seems a natural fiction writer, ... Read more