We Were the Mulvaneys (Oprah Selection) [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), J. Todd Adams (Author)

Book Description

Series: Oprah's Book Club | Publication Date: March 5, 2001

The Mulvaneys are blessed by all that makes life sweet—a hardworking father, a loving mother, three fine sons, and a bright, pretty daughter. They are confident in their love for each other and their position in the rural community of Mt. Ephraim, New York. But something happens on Valentine's Day, 1976—an incident that is hushed up in the town and never spoken of in the Mulvaney home—that rends the fabric of their family life. As the years pass the secrets they keep from each other threaten to destroy them, but ultimately they bridge the chasms between them, and reunite in the spirit of love and healing. Rarely has such an acclaimed writer made such a startling and inspiring statement about the value of hope and compassion.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A happy family, the Mulvaneys. After decades of marriage, Mom and Dad are still in love--and the proud parents of a brood of youngsters that includes a star athlete, a class valedictorian, and a popular cheerleader. Home is an idyllic place called High Point Farm. And the bonds of attachment within this all-American clan do seem both deep and unconditional: "Mom paused again, drawing in her breath sharply, her eyes suffused with a special lustre, gazing upon her family one by one, with what crazy unbounded love she gazed upon us, and at such a moment my heart would contract as if this woman who was my mother had slipped her fingers inside my rib cage to contain it, as you might hold a wild, thrashing bird to comfort it."

But as we all know, Eden can't last forever. And in the hands of Joyce Carol Oates, who's chronicled just about every variety of familial dysfunction, you know the fall from grace is going to be a doozy. By the time all is said and done, a rape occurs, a daughter is exiled, much alcohol is consumed, and the farm is lost. Even to recount these events in retrospect is a trial for the Mulvaney offspring, one of whom declares: "When I say this is a hard reckoning I mean it's been like squeezing thick drops of blood from my veins." In the hands of a lesser writer, this could be the stuff of a bad television movie. But this is Oates's 26th novel, and by now she knows her material and her craft to perfection. We Were the Mulvaneys is populated with such richly observed and complex characters that we can't help but care about them, even as we wait for disaster to strike them down. --Anita Urquhart --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In a tale told primarily from the point of view of the youngest boy, Judd, listeners learn how each of the Mulvaneys struggles with 16-year-old Marianne's date rape and her father's fierce reaction to it Mike Mulvaney bans his daughter from the house, ostensibly because she will not name her rapist. In her 26th novel, Oates once again shows her prowess as mistress of the macabre. The best scenes are not early on when we're introduced to the lovely, successful Mulvaneys, their smart and charming children, and their middle-class American milieu. They are not in the rebuilding of individual lives in the wake of the father's disintegration and death. Nor are they toward the end, when the Mulvaneys reunite as an almost-functional, though much-changed family. It is the flashbacks of Marianne's date rape and especially brother Patrick's plotting and executing his vigilante justice that carry listeners from sentence to sentence throughout Adams's utterly convincing reading. Based on the Penguin hardcover.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Highbridge Audio; 7 hours/5 cassette edition (March 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565114949
• ISBN-13: 978-1565114944
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.4 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (505 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,327,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Books on Cassette > Authors, A-Z > ( O ) > Oates, Joyce Carol

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

91 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good story, but tedious to read..., December 19, 2001

By 

Dianna Johnston "Compulsive Reader" (Joplin, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: We Were the Mulvaneys (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

There is no doubt in my mind that Joyce Carol Oates is a wonderfully gifted writer. However, I don't believe her writing style is for everyone. We Were the Mulvaneys, however evident of Oates's talent, is a tedious, overdescriptive work that takes patience and perseverence to get through.

We Were the Mulvaneys is the story of the Mulvaney family in the mid-1970s. They are the more-than-typical family, like the ones on TV who play games together in the living room after dinner. A little on the corny side, but the love they share for each other is obvious in the beginning chapters. Then something happens to one of the family members - a tragedy atrocious and unforgettable - that threatens to tear the Mulvaneys apart.

While the story itself was very good, I could not get into the book. I was hoping maybe it would be a late-bloomer, but there was never a point that I reached that inspired me to keep reading. I did finish the novel, but only after a week of exhausting myself. However, there is an audience out there for this book, and my suggestion is this: If you are the type of reader that enjoys a slow pace, highly descriptive writing, wordy sentences and a lack of dialogue, then We Were the Mulvaneys would be an excellent choice. My own personal shortcomings about this book is in no way reflective of the talent or storytelling ability of Joyce Carol Oates. Please read this and see for yourself.

165 of 190 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping & distressing but ultimately a pearl of great price, February 8, 2001

By 

Steven Charnick "a solo cello outside a chorus" (Ocean, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Were the Mulvaneys (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

The Oprah book club selections are certainly getting more complex!

This book will strike an immediate chord to a family 'putting on airs' yet within the house having its problems. It hithome for me and will most likely hit home for many others because we know of families that seem perfect.... and often we find out much later what was truly happening.

I do not believe that the choice of Mt. Ephraim as the hometown of the Mulvaneys was by accident. Ephraim and Manasseh were sons of Joseph - and while the latter committed heinous crimes against all moral authority, Ephraim was a redeemer. A striking metaphor against which much hurt is set - and one missed by the editorial reviewers.

This family functions quite well - all that we'd say is 'too good to be true' *is* actually true until Marianne, the girl so beautifully described that we actually *feel* she's the 'girl next door' to *us* is sexually assaulted. Actually, we are never told whether it was rape or consensual. And the beauty of this is that for the purposes of this story it doesn't matter.

It is the *effect* of the assault on the family that begins their descent. I will not spoil the book by telling you the details as to how each of the brothers and the parents fall off their respective wagons. But the cumulative effect is devasting, as told by the narrator, a now adult youngest brother Judd.

How can such a complete destruction of a classic nuclear family be a book I'd want to read? Because as someone once said, it is when a man stares into the abyss that he finds his character.

Suffice it to say that when you are done with this book you will feel as though you knew the Mulvaneys, suffered with them, and wonder how you would have reacted.

I believe everyone can relate to one or more of the characters in this book.

I also believe that this book is a *must* read.

If you want a book that will make you think realistically about life's challenges - and not give you answers, but rather present situations that make you think about how you would respond, this is the book for you.

The cliche that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes never applied more.

And all of us can probably stand to look at this side of life. As with 'The Dark Side of the Light Chasers', it is by looking at our human frailties and faults, shining the light on ourselves, warts and all, that we can come to true self-awareness.

48 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Falling down, January 29, 2001

By 

Phyllis A. Koch (Decatur, Georgia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: We Were the Mulvaneys (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

This novel speaks volumes about how families fall apart and are mended again. The book is engrossing; the story spins out then out of control to a point of terrible sorrow; then it is spun into something more resilent than it was before. It takes one twist in a young woman's life to push the family to its knees. Her misstep resonated within her family to the point of destruction. The twist was a sexual assault; the girl was drinking for the first time, got in the wrong car, and was raped by a popular kid from school. The impact on the Mulvaneys- who all seemed perfect- was shattering. They try to stand together, but the town turns against them once the accusation is made public. Since the story takes place in the '60's, the rape made the girl into both the agressor and the victim. The father, who took such pride in his family, especially his only daughter, takes to drink. He also decides he can't stand to sight of Marianne and all the ruin she has thus far brought to the family. He forces his wife to choose between him and their daughter; in a moment of cowardice, the mother sides with her husband. Thus, the daughter is banished from the family to her aunt's home in another town. The family falls further into disrepair as the father loses his business, the oldest son goes to Vietnam, the second son goes to school but gets trapped in a sea of indifference. The story is told from the point of view of the youngest son. He is bewildered by the power of accusation and to some extent, sex. He is horrified by his father, misses his sister and ignored by his brothers. Only his mother stays by his side; but their relationship is complicated. He's the heart of the family so he has to watch his family falls apart. In a sense, he suffers the most, if only because his age forces him to live with parents who are no longer in love; and the rest of the family stays away as much as possible. He goes from the youngest to the only child of the Mulvaneys. As the sadness nearly overwelms the reader, the story turns again when the mother- a stronger character than portrayed earlier- pulls the family back together. But she is only able to do so after her husband dies. Any move before his death would force her to acknowledge her husband as the linchpin of most of the misery that befalls the family. He drove his beloved daughter away because the rape changed her in his eyes. Then, he loses his business, farm and the rest of the family by drinking too much. Once he is gone, she is able to mend the Mulvaneys to a point beyond their childhoods. Oates outlines a regular American family at a specific point in time and the sorrows brought upon it with grace and style. Using the youngest son as an innocent bystander to tell the Mulvaney's story works nicely; his shock, bewilderment and sorrow is ours.