Search - We Were the Mulvaneys

The writing was too embellished for me and hard to follow at times. Good story, but I felt like I had to plow through to finish.

There were huge chunks of this book that could have been removed and the book would have been better. A good story got lost in an over-abundance of minor details.

"We were the Mulvaneys" was a decent book about a prominent family with everything in the world to look forward to and how they fell from grace. It was well written but a bit too drawn out at times. Definitely a very sad story from beginning to end.

This is one of the best books I've ever read. If you haven't read it yet, do yourself a favor and read it!

Secrets in a family threten to destroy them and break your heart while reading about the love of a family in the rural community of Mt. Ephraim, NY.

Great book on how diffrent people handle the same tragity

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.

A thoroughly enjoyable novel - a MUST READ!!

"Wow, I cannot sum this novel up in a paragraph...In short, it's about a prominent family with everything in the world to look forward to and how they fell from grace. What's heart wrenching is that the route of the problems (the rape of the daughter) is beyond their control, and the shameful pleasure of this boy (the rapist) was so blatantly temporary that he actually forgot about the incident. Nevertheless, his actions started a chain of events that robbed this family of their happiness. What I love about Joyce Carol Oates is that she puts the reader into the characters' shoes for better or for worse. And in her stories, it's usually for worse. She has an undeniable knack for making fiction seem real. She takes much time to develop her characters to the point where you feel you are actually part of this family. So naturally, when she brazenly rips this family apart, you truly feel their pain. I can't further describe her writing...it's unparallel, and this book clearly shows it." - JM courtesy of Amazon Reviews

I actually couldn't finish this book. It went on too long without getting to any point at all.

This book centers on the rape of a pure "Jesus freak" cheerleader from an upstanding family in a small town. I finished half of it , but it is depressing , so I didn't finish it. The author is wonderfully skillful in her writing , but the subject matter deterred me.

The tightknit Mulvaneys start to fall apart when something happens to their daughter. Follows them through the years and shows how their lives go on.

I was so frustrated by this book! I felt like yelling at the characters and telling them to just say it already! I couldn;t finish it because I was too frustrated. Alot of people liked it but.... I didn't really!

Intense read about the fracture and repair of an American family. An Oprah selection.

A compelling story, but it's sometimes difficult to understand how the characters can act the way they do.

"We Were the Mulvaneys celebrates the miracle that allowed a family to bridge the chasms that had opened up between them, and to reuinite in the spirit of love and healing. Pfofoundy cathartic, this novel unfolds as if Oates, in plumbing the darkness of the human spirit, has come upon a source of light at its core." Truly a statement about the value of hope and compassion,

Very good story. I couldn't put it down!

from Oprah's book club
Big paperback

One of her better ones, imho.