We Were the Mulvaneys

Written by Joyce Carol Oates

Narrated by J. Todd Adams

Acclaimed writer Joyce Carol Oate's novel of a family held captive by its own secrets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Feb 15, 2001
• ISBN: 9781598871142

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Reviews for We Were the Mulvaneys

[fuzzy_patters · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We were the Mulvaneys is about a family living in the Chatauqua Valley of New York state and the events that led to the unravelling of that family. The story opens with a first person narrator, Judd, the youngest son of the family, telling the story of how his family used to be a very prominent family in the area near Mt. Ephraim, New York, before an incident in 1976 would lead to a chain of events that would slowly tear the family apart.While I mentioned that Judd was the narrator, that isn't quite right. Sometimes the narrator is Judd, and sometimes it seems to be a third person omniscient narrator. Is that just Judd filling in what he surmises happened? That isn't quite clear. There are about 50-75 pages where Judd isn't mentioned as the narrator at all. Then, all of a sudden, he begins talking at the beginning of a chapter. It felt like Oates forgot that Judd was supposed to be narrating and then suddenly remembered him. However, the alternating between Judd and an omniscient narrator worked much better in the fourth quarter of the book, which leaves me wondering if it was intentional. Maybe it was unintentional at first, and then she decided to just go with it. Either way, it is jolting when Judd reappears in the middle of the book after having been gone for so long.Another jolting issue with the book is the presence of anachronisms. For one, the family has a cat named E.T. in 1976. The film E.T. wouldn't come out for another six years. Also, there are teenagers in 1976 named Austen and Zachary. Both of these names were very popular baby names in the 1990s when the book was written, but they would not have been names commonly used around 1960 when these characters would have been born. Anachronistic names can jolt a reader out of the time and place of a story's narrative and make the book less effective. This is another thing that got better towards the end of the book, where I didn't notice anymore anachronisms.One thing that really struck me about this book was the level of detail that Joyce writes with. That is something that can get on my nerves if a writer slathers layers of detail onto a story with no sense of purpose, which I thought Joyce was doing early in the book. However, as I continued to read, I realized that she was painting a picture that enabled me to get inside of the heads of her characters because I now knew every angle of their lives and the impact everything had on them. This level of detail had become a strength by the end of the book, and I realized that it was necessary and intentional to tell the story.By the end, I thought this was a very good but very inconsistently frustrating book that was plagued by a muddled middle despite a good start and a very good finish. I was left wondering if Oates felt pressured to publish quickly and didn't have time to clean the middle up as much as she could have. The ending, however, was great, and would have been even better without the epilogue that, while good, wasn't really a necessary addition to the story. The story ended well without it.

[tess_w · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is about how a family coped, or failed to cope with a family tragedy. The family disintegrates, but in the end, they reunite. It was never as it was before, but the human spirit, being indomitable, morphs to a new place where it can survive. I think the book was about 75 pages too long, as the first 100 pages were very very slow moving. Maybe the author wanted to show what a mundane family life they had? 468 pages 4 stars

[Laura Bullock · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Listener beware. It's hard to say what I thought about this books because this audiobook is severely abridged. I wish that had been clearly stated somewhere.

[qofd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I didn't find this easy to read. Marianne and her parents annoyed the heck out of me and this was what really ruined the book. They were all pathetic in the way they handled tragedy. For awhile it looked like it might get more interesting and then the story wandered and pretty much fell apart. Shame.

[jackmessenger-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Completely wonderful

[lynleys-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Mulvaneys are painted in such vivid detail that it's hard to believe this isn't autobiography. The details of happy, and then not so happy, family life are so well-drawn that descriptions overwhelm the action, and this did slow the narrative down to the point where my interest was waning by the time I was 2/3 of the way through. Still, I persevered and felt an unpleasant amount of gloom, as was intended, I'm sure.Like Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, the point of view in this story is what I can best describe as 'omniscient first person', written by the youngest brother in a way that gets right into each family member's head. It's an unusual technique and maybe we're not meant to notice it, but I can't help but wonder if Judd's POV is an unreliable one.

[tess_schoolmarm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is about how a family coped, or failed to cope with a family tragedy. The family disintegrates, but in the end, they reunite. It was never as it was before, but the human spirit, being indomitable, morphs to a new place where it can survive. I think the book was about 75 pages too long, as the first 100 pages were very very slow moving. Maybe the author wanted to show what a mundane family life they had? 468 pages 4 stars

[alwaysasterisk · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book was very monotonous, repetitive and redundant!!!!! The same facts about all of the characters were repeated over and over evey few pages it got to be so annoying. I wish this book could have been edited down to about 250 pages, I could have saved myself some time. I just wanted to read this book and get it over with. Save yourself some time and find another book to read .

[wiserwisegirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A delightful immersion.

[dele2451 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The rise of a smalltown American family, its downfall, and its long struggle to recover from the insidious crime that forever altered the course of their lives.

[copyedit52 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a five-star book, the best of her books I'd read, until I got to the epilogue. Then, unfortunately, the grim but realistic tone the author had established and hewed to throughout disappeared. The pollyanna ending also undid the believability of certain major characters.

[alisony-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm a sucker for a good old family saga, and I'm glad to say that JCO didn't disappoint with this one. Set in the 1970s, the Mulvaneys are the epitome of the perfect all American family. Michael Snr. runs a successful roofing company and is a stalwart of the business associations and circles of Mt. Emphraim, a small country town. His wife Corinne, a farmer's daughter, runs a hobby antique business from their picture postcard farmhouse, but is at her happiest when gathered around a noisy dinner table with their four children as they laugh and tease each other. The four children are all achievers in their own right and popular at school. JCO takes her time allowing us to settle in with this rambunctious, close family, before an event happens which shatters the Mulvaney family harmony. I won't spoil it for anyone who might read it in the future, but it's one of those sad unravellings that as a reader you can see doesn't have to be that way.I enjoyed this novel, as I think it portrayed well the potential frailty of even the strongest of family relationships, and how they can be turned on their head in a way that could never have been foreseen.I doubt it will be my book of the year, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.4 stars - an enjoyable, page-turning read.

[cindiann_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The lumbering Mulvaneys, apparently. Stick with Oates' short work.

[sweetiegherkin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We Were the Mulvaneys tells the story of a close-knit farm family whose lives are shattered when the daughter(sister) is raped at a high school dance in the 1970s. The family's fortunes suddenly plummet as the small town turns against them to side with the rapist's more prestigious family. The children of the Mulvaney family all end up going their separate ways and the novel follows their lives over the years.Having previously read Oates's Blonde and heard her speak at a public reading, I was so excited to read this book. Unfortunately, this was one of those cases of high expectations being shattered. We Were the Mulvaneys has a very slow start, and I felt like I slogged through the first 80 pages for ages. Partially it was because Oates was setting up so much background; she introduces the town, the farm, the family, the many pets and animals they owned, etc. In addition to trying to keep track of the large family, Oates very early on gives a long list of all their pet names for each other. To wit, "For instance, Michael Sr. was usually Dad but sometimes Curly and sometimes Captain. He could be Grouchy (of the Seven Dwarves), or Groucho (of Groucho Marx fame), he could be Big Bear, Chickie, Sugarcake--these names used exclusively by Mom." And so on for the rest of the six-person family. That's a lot of information to throw at a person all at once. I suspect Oates was trying to show a contrast in this beginning section between the Mulvaneys before and after the rape, but it seemed like she would have done better to show some positive family interactions rather than tell the reader about them.The story is told in part in the first-person by Judd, the youngest Mulvaney child, from a distance of many years. However, these sections are interspersed between third-person narratives than describe events to which Judd would not have had access. Personally, I found the Judd-narrated parts to be the least interesting and wondered why this technique had been chosen as I felt it added little to to the overall story. Although the story is nominally about the whole family, the characters who we see the most for the bulk of the story (and particularly see the most of their inner lives) are the daughter Marianne and the second son Patrick. Since they are fairly interesting and developed characters, this seemed like a good choice. Judd and the oldest son Mike Jr. are honestly nondescript and the parents, while colorful, were not characters I liked much so I didn't really need to hear more about them than I did.One thing that bothered me from early on in the book is that another girl in the high school is also raped -- in fact, by multiple members of the high school sporting clique. But she is only mentioned once in passing later. It seemed like this girl -- with a less desirable background -- didn't have a story worthy of telling, unlike Marianne who was frequently described as the perfect, all-American daughter with good grades, popular friends, etc. etc. prior to the sexual assault. I'm not sure if Oates was trying to make a point there, but it seemed to me like she brought up an issue that she decided wasn't worth exploring and I'm not sure why she didn't drop it out of the book altogether then.In the end, while I found the last roughly 400 pages of this book a compelling enough read, the slow beginning and other issues here and there prevent me from whole-heartedly recommending it.

[nancynova · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Oldest ABC TBR. Set in Southwest NY state, the family is blessed by a hardworking father who owns a roofing company, stay at home Mom and 4 beautiful children. Until the night of the prom when Marianne is raped by a local rich boy, and the entire family implodes, collataral victims of the tragedy. Marianne declines to press changes - since she was drunk, she feels it's her fault. Dad feels so guilty that Mom sides with him and sends MArianne away to live with distant cousins, which makes Marianne feel abandoned. Still Dad obsesses with the townsfolk, consulting lawyers and drinking heavily. The kids drift away, yet the mother still tries to hold on to Dad and save him, at the expense of maintaining ties with her kids. I think the book could have ended one chapter earlier, skipping the loving family reunion at the end.

[yvonne.sevignykaiser · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Family torn apart by tragedy. Death of a father brings opportunity for the family to come together and heal old wounds. Can provide an interesting discussion on revenge, strength and weakness of families for book clubs. Easy to see why this became an Oprah pick.

[cobygirl517 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

SAD. SAD. SAD. I think I bawled my entire way through this book. But it was well-written. But SAD. I may need anti-depressants after this one...

(I've been told by a friend that all of the books by this author are depressing, but I don't plan on reading another one, or I may end up jumping off a bridge.)

[strandbooks_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Now that I've read 3 books by Joyce Carol Oates I think I can describe them as emotionally-draining. Halfway through this book I thought "wow. these people are so miserable. I wonder why this wasn't an Oprah book club book." Lo and behold, it was an Oprah book! Sometimes I get frustrated with all the description in Oates' books because I need to know what is going to happen to the characters.

[xuebi-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What is a family except memories?

This is one of the central questions at the heart of We Were The Mulvaneys, a story of the picture-perfect American family, who seemly have it all, yet one day an incident involving the sixteen-year-old daughter rend the fabric of their family life and cause tragic consequences for years to come. It is these memories that are explored, narrated by the youngest son Judd, as the reader is transported back to the bustling, lively, and warm family farm in upstate New York. Oates excels in describing the minutiae of everyday life, drawing the reader into the heart of the family and their home. Every memory, every experience is perfectly recreated for the reader as Judd Mulvaney relives those formative days in the family home. Throughout the novel, it is Oates' descriptions of the emotions and the setting that completely envelops the reader and keeps them turning the pages.

A consequence of this is that the story does take a while to get underway, yet that time is not wasted as the reader is instead able to fully know every aspect of the Mulvaney family, which makes their eventual fall even more poignant. It is the sole daughter who is the centre of the incident and the reverberations from which shatter the tranquil, storybook lives of all the other family members. Yet, that is just the catalyst, for more troubles and problems beset the family - Oates ensures that it never rains but it pours for the Mulvaneys. Still this is a novel of the rise, fall and final salvation and redemption of this all-American family - it is in a way a deconstruction and reconstruction of that archetypical family - self-made husband, smiling wife, sports star son etc.

The ending is painfully bittersweet - redemption comes to the family but at a high price: death, self-imposed exile, resentment, and despair have taken a toll on them family; yet, one thing remains constant throughout the novel: the bonds of love between them all that cannot be broken (even if they should have been).

Oates' prose is richly detailed and fully draws the reader into the lives of the Mulvaneys - it deeply personal and emotional. Not only are the descriptions of persons and feelings are detailed, Oates also populates the Mulvaneys' lives with animals that are as multi-faceted as her human characters. Even High Point Farm is alive. All of the Mulvaney family are truly human: that is, their emotions are real and complicated, their responses are fickle and real. It is hard to truly find a central character to root for; instead, each one is flawed (sometimes to the extreme).

A passage near the start of the novel sums up much of the central theme of memory in the novel - it: seemingly prophetic, it is what follows in the waking world after the sweet dreamlike life the Mulvaneys took for granted, while serving as an example of Oates' delicately-crafted prose.

Getting us into focus requires effort, let getting a dream into focus and keeping it there. One of those hauntingly tantalising dreams that seem so vivid, so real, until you look closely, try to see - and then they begin to fade, like smoke.

[kingarooski · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In a book where none of the characters appealed to me, Joyce Carol Oates somehow wrote a book that I liked. Half-way through, I considered abandoning it because the misery, the utter hopelessness was too much and the characters living in the book were too annoying. I struggle with Michael Mulvaney, Sr. especially, but that is the intent of the author, I believe. Corinne, Patrick and Mule were all unreliable in their own way. I wish more time was spent with Marianne, but I was two-thirds through the book before she became a more frequent presence and we learned of her point of view (after the move). In the end, Joyce Carol Oates seems to say "what is a family if not the memories that follow each family member around?" Interesting.

[tealightful · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Really Early Bird comment: I really strongly dislike the current narration style. Pleh!

Basic Summary: "Perfect", popular, loveable Mulvaney family is adored by their town. Until, their only daughter is date raped on prom night and the town turns on them. Only it's much snootier and more boring than it sounds. All the kids go off and implode into messes, the Father becomes a drunk (not a spoiler!). I wouldn't call the book predictable but I wouldn't call it riveting.

The narration style drove me nuts and, I know, that is 100% personal opinion. There were dashes of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person narrative. Like someone dumped the storytelling into a blender and spit it back out. Despite the first chapter making it clear that the entire story is supposed to be narrated by the "journalist" youngest son.

Finished 8/28: I would rather have someone drop a brick on my face from a 3rd story building than have to re-read this book ever again. That being said, I know why it was recommended to me and the writing was pretty darn good and I may need to check into a different Joyce Carol Oates novel to test it out.

Final note: They describe the mother as a "graying redhead", which everyone knows is a rarity! Us natural redheads don't gray, we blonde!

Quotes:

1) "But I believe in uttering the truth, even if it hurts. Particularly if it huts".
2) "If nothing can cause such tears, what might something someday do?"

[elaineruss · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was an excellent book although I did find it very unsettling and upsetting. Several times at the beginning, I actually had to put it down and step away for a while to let my mind settle.

It is beautifully written and the story is fantastically told and I believe the crumbling of the family unit is very realistic. What lets it down though is the length.

The book is a lot longer than it needs to be and it struggles to maintain the story and emotion effectively. After we finally learn of 'the event' the sense of foreboding (which is almost unbearable up to that point) leaves and while we're left with a fascinating insight into the downfall of a family it is stretched too thin.

I'll definitely read more by Joyce Carol Oates though I'm hoping they don't all unsettle me as much as this did!

[amelish · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Those 6 hours of my life could have been far better spent. Re-reading The Corrections, for example.

Oprah's Book Club, I'm dumping you once and for all. Don't txt me again.

[laine4cunningham · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A subtly constructed work that should receive a national award. I compare her to Franzen yet she offers readers more meaningful fare than he does...and in my mind that makes Oates superior to Franzen.

[marlene9nl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 I wrote about this book:

I have finished reading this book. It was a hard read though, not only because of the story but also cause the style of writing I guess?
At one time I thought shall I continue, but the story was so intriguing, i wanted to know what happened. I am glad i did. loved the storyline. I have cried my eyes out 2 nights in a row.

[mifune_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"We Mulvaneys are joined at the heart!"Written, as interpreted by the youngest boy of the family (Judd, Ranger, among half a dozen other nicknames), before and after a calamity that changes their family forever, the Mulvaneys are seemingly the prized possession of American life in the mid-1970s. Each one of the four miniature Mulvaneys (some more pipsqueak than the others, and not including the countless number of animals on their farm, which to them are practically family) have their own unique emotional attachment with each other. They do things as one single entity, but also differently; they are provided their own space and free will to certain limits. Call it family. Finding a platform amongst the rising sense of chaos, a war looming, the fear of falling apart. When Ranger, the youngest, our narrator, hears his mom's tale about providence, when she was saved by God one snowy night, he felt as if his mother was clutching his heart, keeping it from escaping his chest. These are caring people each in their own ways. These God-fearing people had a child's inquisitiveness, and many of them too sensitive to the real world that the outside community began to see them as weak, in need of putting out of their misery (once they succumbed to it) just like an injured and unrecoverable animal. The other town folk, after Marianne is raped by one of her own classmates, see a need to relieve them of their pain, ignore them, cast them out into the wilderness that was not there. And maybe they too prophesied a similar sensitivity and couldn't bare to see them suffer anymore. The reader doesn't know. The reader is only aware of the events and Corrine's (mostly) fevered attempts at patching together the family--an obvious parallel to Joyce Carol Oates herself. And this is one among many problems that progressively worsen after the big reveal. After the Mulvaney clan has been decimated and the secret is out, and although the father acts realistically, it's still cold, and unnatural, and unwarranted for his character and back story (we're merely presented with facts ranging from that he's a tough, hard working Republican, to that he supports the war effort). Once the family is dispersed things become directionless. The first 200 pages didn't build a showcase of individual isolation, so when that isolation eventually comes rolling by, we couldn't care less. I wanted more emotional investment. Corrine, or the mother's story about being saved by angels, that once touched Ranger's heart, was a great escape, and something I could've used more of to warrant Part II of the book. The second major problem I had with this book is that it becomes too cutesy it begins to drown in the character's own stoic charm. There are too many exclamation marks. Characters are always on the brink of unrivaled giddy. My stomach churns. What was endearing at first makes way for the melodramatic. Italics run rampant. Internal dialogue, those long passages that profess to reveal everything to the reader, needed to be caged and leashed. (It's my own personal judgement, but exclamations only work this obtusely for sarcasm and actual screaming, not a character's intrinsic lack of depth.) This all doesn't come easily, though. I wanted to like this book, but no kind of magic could bestow this kind of lackluster development into my continuing attention. Oats is not only a prolific writer, but sometimes even a great one. Various sections of We Were the Mulvaneys revealed her true greatness, but nowhere near the breadth of the book. "We're not like that," Corrine says to her husband when she finds out that he beat up the boy that raped his daughter. He responds by saying, "Maybe we are."And thus, we are supposed to believe the next 250 pages that follow, the idea that perfection is only perfect because it has been left alone, spared from the real world, their children growing up in a chaotic environment like all children have to. All of this must be acquired and processed within just a few lines of dialogue. Good luck taking that adventure yourself when the writer isn't even there to tell you north from south.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This story is one of a "typical" American family, if there could be such a thing. I read this with a book group and we mostly liked the novel in spite of the melodramatic qualities of the story. The characters were well-defined and believable, but a tragic incident changes their lives with the result that the family is never the same again. One reviewer described the novel as "as rich and as maddeningly jumbled as life itself." That it was but most of the jumbles I have experienced in my life (not perhaps typical) are much less exciting. The tragedy of the Mulvaneys is not their end and so there is some hope in this story. In the end it was a good read and perhaps even better for Oates devotees.

[sinaloa237_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great book. So detailed and precise decription of the process of the family torn apart. Even the end, which is not exactly what you expect it to be, is nice - and a bit of a relief.

[amaryann21 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to like this story, but so much of it was boring and unnecessary. It was WORK to get through. This is the second Oates book I've read and I am unimpressed.

[novelcommentary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Mulvaneys are a prosperous all American family, living in upper New York. Their sprawling farm is filled with pets and antiques collected by Corrine, the happily married mother of four. Her husband’s roofing company is doing well as are her four children. Mike Jr. the football star, Patrick, the school valedictorian, Marianne, the good hearted cheerleader and Judd, who is narrating this story of a family in decline. After all the title is We Were the Mulvaneys. This past tense of the title tells us things are not the same. Judd was the youngest in the family so the event of 1976, when Marianne was sexually assaulted on prom night is kept from him. He knows his family has changed but it takes awhile before Patrick tells him the details. For a good 400 pages we see the family split apart – Michael Sr. cannot understand his daughter’s unwillingness to press charges and the saddest part of the novel is to see how she becomes the shunned one. Her friends and most shockingly even her father cannot ignore what has happened. Instead he ships her away to live with relatives and begins drinking to excess. Judd then intertwines the stories of Marianne and Patrick with those of how his mother tries to cope with her abusive, alcoholic husband. She is eternally optimistic, feeling like everything is only temporary – losing the family farm, never seeing her children, separating from her husband. There is redemption at the end of the novel that I didn’t expect, but have to admit enjoyed reading. The strength of the family memories and remembering the better days seems to be enough to save this group some 20 years later. Joyce Carol Oates writes about these people with knowledge of the area and knowledge of the pain that small town attitudes can inflict. In one interview she relates that the idea is based on real life and her touching scenes of pets, particularly Marianne’s cat is actually taken from her own childhood. I have not read that much from this prolific author, but am thankful that I picked this up.