We Were the Mulvaneys (Oprah's Book Club) [Paperback]

Joyce Carol Oates (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 24, 2001

A New York Times Notable Book and a former Oprah Book Club® selection

Moving away from the dark tone of her more recent masterpieces, Joyce Carol Oates turns the tale of a family struggling to cope with its fall from grace into a deeply moving and unforgettable account of the vigor of hope and the power of love to prevail over suffering. The Mulvaneys of High Point Farm in Mt. Ephraim, New York, are a large and fortunate clan, blessed with good looks, abundant charisma, and boundless promise. But over the twenty-five year span of this ambitious novel, the Mulvaneys will slide, almost imperceptibly at first, from the pinnacle of happiness, transformed by the vagaries of fate into a scattered collection of lost and lonely souls. It is the youngest son, Judd, now an adult, who attempts to piece together the fragments of the Mulvaneys' former glory, seeking to uncover and understand the secret violation that occasioned the family's tragic downfall. Each of the Mulvaneys endures some form of exile--physical or spiritual--but in the end they find a way to bridge the chasms that have opened up among them, reuniting in the spirit of love and healing. Profoundly cathartic, Oates' acclaimed novel unfolds as if, in the darkness of the human spirit, she has come upon a source of light at its core. Rarely has a writer made such a startling and inspiring statement about the value of hope and compassion.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Oprah Book Club® Selection, January 2001: 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

From Publishers Weekly

Elegiac and urgent in tone, Oates's wrenching 26th novel (after Zombie) is a profound and darkly realistic chronicle of one family's hubristic heyday and its fall from grace. The wealthy, socially elite Mulvaneys live on historic High Point Farm, near the small upstate town of Mt. Ephraim, N.Y. Before the act of violence that forever destroys it, an idyllic incandescence bathes life on the farm. Hard-working and proud, Michael Mulvaney owns a successful roofing company. His wife, Corinne, who makes a halfhearted attempt at running an antique business, adores her husband and four children, feeling "privileged by God." Narrator Judd looks up to his older brothers, athletic Mike Jr. ("Mule") and intellectual Patrick ("Pinch"), and his sister, radiant Marianne, a popular cheerleader who is 17 in 1976 when she is raped by a classmate after a prom. Though the incident is hushed up, everyone in the family becomes a casualty. Guilty and shamed by his reaction to his daughter's defilement, Mike Sr. can't bear to look at Marianne, and she is banished from her home, sent to live with a distant relative. The family begins to disintegrate. Mike loses his business and, later, the homestead. The boys and Corinne register their frustration and sadness in different, destructive ways. Valiant, tainted Marianne runs from love and commitment. More than a decade later, there is a surprising denouement, in which Oates accommodates a guardedly optimistic vision of the future. Each family member is complexly rendered and seen against the background of social and cultural conditioning. As with much of Oates's work, the prose is sometimes prolix, but the very rush of narrative, in which flashbacks capture the same urgency of tone as the present, gives this moving tale its emotional power. 75,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 454 pages
• Publisher: Plume (January 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452277205
• ISBN-13: 978-0452282827
• ASIN: 0452282829
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (522 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #76,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

178 of 205 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

Format: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. Read more ›

102 of 117 people found the following review helpful

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

By Dianna Setterfield

Format: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.

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Falling down January 29, 2001

By Phyllis A. Koch

Format: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. Read more ›

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars I think it's a parody November 23, 1999

By Sherry C. Williams

Format:Paperback

This book has lots of enticing parallels to Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: three brothers in distress over the fall from innocence of a beloved sister. Mule Mulvaney the athlete is nicely parallel to Jason Compson the tough businessman, Patrick Mulvaney the scientist gone off to Cornell to Quenton Compson the sensitive son gone off to Harvard. Is it possible that our narrator Judd is also parallel to the youngest Compson son Benjy, the idiot by whom the tale of sound and fury is initially told?

It's tempting to think so. Because then he would be an untrustworthy narrator and I wouldn't have to believe what he tells us about these people.

When reading Joyce Carol Oates, I always have the feeling that she must have her tongue way in her cheek. She's pulling our legs but keeping a very straight face. Look at the ending here: Mom's hair has become silver glinting like mica - a crown. Patrick the bitter bookworm turned terrorist is now a perfect California boy with a great arm for slow pitch softball. Wounded and wild Marianne has been domesticated by the Horse Whisperer - who proposes while euthanizing her beloved old cat. And of course, like Christ, Daddy has died for all our sins and we can all be the perfect Mulvaneys again. Surely this can't be serious.