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Moving away from the sometimes dark and harrowing tone of her more recent novels, including Zombie and What I Lived For, Oates's storytelling takes a profound and luminous turn in a tale that spans 25 years in the life of one American family--its rise, fall, and ultimate redemption.
in her gracefully sprawling new novel, Joyce Carol Oates delivers a modern family tragedy with a theme as painfully primal as Oedipus Rex. Over the course of 400-plus pages, we watch, in a kind of slow-motion horror, as life at the Mulvaneys' High Point Farm in upstate New York is wrenched apart by an act of careless brutality inflicted by an outsider upon the family's only daughter. The rape of the almost-too-perfect Marianne -- spoken of in hushed voices and euphemistic language designed to efface its blunt horror -- comes to haunt each member of the family in a different way.
Shocked and embarrassed by Marianne's "trouble" (and unwilling to punish the young man who brutalized her), the community of Mt. Ephraim turns upon the Mulvaneys, and they turn upon each other. Marianne's mere presence becomes intolerable to her increasingly erratic father, who is filled with rage at his daughter's defilement and at the town's betrayal of his trust. She is banished from the house; her two older brothers send themselves into exile. While at college, Patrick -- as aloof and angrily obsessive as the Unabomber -- plans an act of rough justice against his sister's rapist.
Reduced to the bare essence of its plot, Oates' book sounds uncomfortably like a movie-of-the-week melodrama -- a high-minded plea against the horrors of date rape. With its atmosphere of secrecy and doom, it might appear merely another example of Oates' gothic imagination run amok: The Fall of the House of Mulvaney.
But this book is much more than that. Detailing the small rituals of intimacy that define a close-knit family, Oates pulls us gently into the comfortable Mulvaney world. When this world begins to break apart, we fully grasp the extent of the tragedy -- and the unsettling fragility of a life that seems at first as solidly anchored as the Mulvaneys' old farm house. Oates -- as obsessive as the Mulvaneys themselves -- follows each thread of the story to its conclusion -- a conclusion that hints at a kind of reconciliation and something close to closure. This is a novel that comes close, very close, to being as rich and as maddeningly jumbled as life itself.
—Salon
The story, from the 1950s through the 1980s, tells of roofing contractor Mike Mulvaney, his beautiful and tenderhearted wife Corinne, and their four children: "High school celebrity" and football hero Mike Jr., intellectually gifted Patrick, sweet and simple Marianne, and troubled Judd, the youngest, who narrates, mixing "conjecture" with remembered facts as he recounts both his immediate family's shared experiences and the earlier lives of their parents. The resulting panorama offers both a brilliantly detailed and varied picture of family life and a succession of dramatic set pieces, the majority of which are ingeniously related to "the events of 1976 when everything came apart for us." In that year, inexperienced Marianne either was raped or had consensual sex with a high-school boy she hardly knew—Oates keeps both possibilities teasingly in play—and in the aftermath of her disgrace, Mike Sr. became a helpless belligerent drunk, Patrick subverted his formidable powers of concentration to fantasies of "executing justice," and the once-proud Mulvaneys began their long descent into financial ruin, estrangement, and death. Their harrowing story is leavened by Oates's matchless grasp of middle- class culture, and by a number of superbly orchestrated extended scenes and flashbacks. These are people we recognize, and she makes us care deeply about them.
Just when you think Oates has finally run dry, or is mired in mechanical self-repetition, she stuns you with another example of her essential kinship with the classic American realistic novelists. Dreiser would have understood and approved the passion and power of We Were the Mulvaneys.
In addition to many prize-winning and bestselling novels, including We Were the Mulvaneys, Black Water, and Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart (available in Plume editions), Joyce Carol Oates is the author of a number of works of gothic fiction including Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (Plume), a 1995 World Fantasy Award nominee; and Zombie (Plume), winner of the 1996 Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel, awarded by the Horror Writers' Association. In 1994, Oates received the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award in Horror Fiction. She is the editor of American Gothic Tales and her latest novel is Broke Heart Blues (Dutton). She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
A born storyteller, Oates has been spinning yarns since she was a little girl too young to even write. Instead, she would communicate her stories through drawings and paintings. When she received her very first typewriter at the age of 14, her creative floodgates opened with a torrent. She says she wrote "novel after novel" throughout high school and college -- a prolificacy that has continued unabated throughout a professional career that began in 1963 with her first short story collection, By the North Gate.
Oates's breakthrough occurred in 1969 with the publication of them, a National Book Award winner that established her as a force to be reckoned with. Since that auspicious beginning, she has been nominated for nearly every major literary honor -- from the PEN/Faulkner Award to the Pulitzer Prize -- and her fiction turns up with regularity on The New York Times annual list of Notable Books.
On average Oates publishes at least one novel, essay anthology, or story collection a year (during the 1970s, she produced at the astonishing rate of two or three books a year!). And although her fiction often exposes the darker side of America's brightest facades – familial unrest, sexual violence, the death of innocence – she has also made successful forays into Gothic novels, suspense, fantasy, and children's literature. As novelist John Barth once remarked, "Joyce Carol Oates writes all over the aesthetical map."
Where she finds the time for it no one knows, but Oates manages to combine her ambitious, prolific writing career with teaching: first at the University of Windsor in Canada, then (from 1978 on), at Princeton University in New Jersey. For all her success and fame, her daily routine of teaching and writing has changed very little, and her commitment to literature as a transcendent human activity remains steadfast.
Oates's Black Water, which is a thinly veiled account of Ted Kennedy's car crash in Chappaquiddick, was produced as an opera in the 1990s.
In 2001, Oprah Winfrey selected Oates's novel We Were the Mulvaneys for her Book Club.
We were the Mulvaneys, remember us?
You may have thought our family was larger, often I'd meet people who believed we Mulvaneys were a virtual clan, but in fact there were only six of us: my dad who was Michael John Mulvaney, Sr., my mom Corinne, my brothers Mike Jr. and Patrick and my sister Marianne, and me—Judd.
From summer 1955 to spring 1980 when my dad and mom were forced to sell the property there were Mulvaneys at High Point Farm, on the High Point Road seven miles north and east of the small city of Mt. Ephraim in upstate New York, in the Chautauqua Valley approximately seventy miles south of Lake Ontario.
High Point Farm was a well-known property in the Valley, in time to be designated a historical landmark, and "Mulvaney" was a well-known name.
For a long time you envied us, then you pitied us.
For a long time you admired us, then you thought Good!—that's what they deserve.
"Too direct, Judd!"—my mother would say, wringing her hands in discomfort. But I believe in uttering the truth, even if it hurts. Particularly if it hurts.
For all of my childhood as a Mulvaney I was the baby of the family. To be the baby of such a family is to know you're the last little caboose of a long roaring train. They loved me so, when they paid any attention to me at all. I was like a creature dazed and blinded by intense, searing light that might suddenly switch off and leave me in darkness. I couldn't seem to figure out who I was, if I had an actual name, or many names, all of them affectionate and many of them teasing, like "Dimple," "Pretty Boy" or, alternately, "Sourpuss," or "Ranger"—my favourite. I was "Baby" or "Babyface" much of the time while growing up. "Judd" was a name associated with a certain measure of sternness, sobriety, though in fact we Mulvaney children were rarely scolded and even more rarely punished. "Judson Andrew" which is my baptismal name was a name of such dignity and aspiration I never came to feel it could be mine, only something borrowed like a Hallowe'en mask.
You'd get the impression, at least I did, that "Judd" who was "Baby" almost didn't make it. Getting born, I mean. The train had pulled out, the caboose was being rushed to the track. Not that Corinne Mulvaney was so very old when I was born—she was only thirty-three. Which certainly isn't "old" by today's standards. I was born in 1963, the year Dad used to say, with a grim shake of his head, a sick-at-heart look in his eyes, "tore history in two" for Americans. What worried me was I'd come along so belatedly, everyone else was here except me! A complete Mulvaney family without Judd.
Always it seemed, hard as I tried I could never hope to catch up with all their good times, secrets, jokes—their memories. What is a family, after all, except memories?—haphazard and precious as the contents of a catchall drawer in the kitchen (called the "junk drawer" in our household, for good reason). My handicap, I gradually realized, was that by the time I got around to being born, my brother Mike was already ten years old and for children that's equivalent to another generation. Where's Baby?—who's got Baby? the cry would commence, and whoever was nearest would scoop me up and off we'd go. A scramble of dogs barking, exaggerated as animals are often exaggerations of human beings, emotions so rawly exposed. Who's got Baby? Don't forget Baby!
The dogs, cats, horses, even the cars and pickups Dad and Mom drove before I was born, those big flashy-sexy Fifties models—all these I would pore over in Mom's overstuffed snapshot albums, determined to attach myself to their memories. Sure, I remember! Sure, I was there! Mike's first pony Crackerjack who was a sorrel with sand-coloured markings. Our setter Foxy as a puppy. The time Dad ran the tractor into a ditch. The time Mom threw corncobs to scare away strange dogs she believed were threatening the chickens and the dogs turned out to be a black bear and two cubs. The time Dad invited 150 people to Mulvaney's Fourth of July cookout assuming that only about half would show up, and everyone showed up—and a few more. The time a somewhat disreputable friend of Dad's flew over to High Point Farm from an airport in Marsena in a canary-yellow Piper Cub and landed—"Crash-landed, almost," Mom would say dryly—in one of the pastures, and though the baby in the snapshots commemorating this occasion would have to have been my sister Marianne, in July 1960, I was able to convince myself Yes I was there, I remember. I do!
And when in subsequent years they would speak of the incident, recalling the way the wind buffeted the little plane when Wally Parks, my Dad's friend, took Dad up for a brief flight, I was positive I'd been there, I could recall how excited I was, how excited we all were, Mike, Patrick, Marianne and me, and of course Mom, watching as the Piper Cub rose higher and higher shuddering in the wind, grew smaller and smaller with distance until it was no larger than a sparrow hawk, high above the Valley, looking as if a single strong gust of wind could bring it down. And Mom prayed aloud, "God, bring those lunatics back alive and I'll never complain about anything again, I promise. Amen."
I'd swear even now, I'd been there.
For the Mulvaneys were a family in which everything that happened to them was precous and everything that was precious was stored in memory and everyone had a history.
Which is why many of you envied us, I think. Before the events of 1976 when everything came apart for us and was never again put together in quite the same way.
Although Joyce Carol Oates enjoys the occasional pay-per-view boxing match, the sixty-two-year-old author doesn't watch a lot of TV. In fact, before it was announced that Oates's 1996 novel We Were the Mulvaneys was the first of Oprah's Book Club picks of 2001, she had never even seen the program. With her schedule, there's not much time for channel surfing. Oates spends her days, and often nights, composing novels, poetry, nonfiction and short-story collections -- she has about seventy books to her name. She also writes plays, essays, and book reviews, edits anthologies and Ontario Review, which she and her husband founded in 1974, and teaches creative writing at Princeton University.
We Were the Mulvaneys has sold hundreds of thousands of copies since its golden seal of approval. This is the first time Oates has reached Number One on the New York Times bestseller list, even though she's been churning out books at an extraordinary pace since winning the National Book Award for her novel them in 1970. But if her work has not sailed to the top of the charts, most of it has been critically acclaimed.
"She's a phenomenon," says poet Daniel Halpern, her editor at Ecco Press. "It makes a lot of people nervous, especially other writers, that she produces so much. But what should make them nervous is not the quantity but the quality of the work that comes out. She amazes me, that book after book is of such a high level."
How could anyone be this productive, particularly considering that she writes everything, novels included, in longhand first before transferring words to type? Oates says she doesn't feel that she is -- she's just well organized.
"My days begin early, and end late," says Oates, who lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her husband, Raymond Smith, and two cats. She says she is always thinking of her work, no matter what she's doing. In particular, the story ideas really flow while running, walking, and bicycling. "At such times the imagination floats free, and one can contemplate one's work with an almost magical detachment."
Magically detached or not, Oates still manages to have a rich social life. She attends countless campus events, like dance and theater, travels, and seeks out ethnic restaurants. "She's very sociable," says her close friend, feminist scholar and Princeton professor Elaine Showalter, who marvels at her friend's ability to squeeze in the time to entertain. "She throws several large parties a year and smaller dinner parties, and she goes out to a lot of parties," adds Greg Johnson, author of 1998's Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates. "I think it's just that she's a very scheduled and disciplined person whose life is very orderly in the way that most of our lives are not."
While Showalter says that her friend has a wicked sense of humor, Oates exudes a consummate professional's calm, cool demeanor. When she picked up the phone last January and found Oprah Winfrey on the other end, Oates recalls, she wasn't ruffled. "I'm not that emotional," Oates says in her book-filled Princeton office, a movie poster of 1996's Foxfire looming above her head (one of the only movies made from her books). Only the slightest smile betrays her detachment.
Looking at Oates's oeuvre, it's surprising that Winfrey didn't call earlier. In many of her books, Oates has examined how violence can decimate domesticity, particularly in women's lives, a subject Winfrey has been keen on in her selections. From Oates's classic 1966 short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" to 2001's Faithless: Tales of Transgression, she has exposed with sickening realism the danger that can erupt in everyday situations. In 1996's We Were the Mulvaneys, for example, an idyllic family in upstate New York (where Oates grew up) falls apart after their only daughter and sister is raped after a school dance. "I am a chronicler of the American experience," Oates says. "We have been historically a nation prone to violence, and it would be unreal to ignore this fact. What intrigues me is the response to violence: its aftermath in the private lives of women and children in particular."
While Oates may rival other famously prolific authors like Tom Clancy and Danielle Steel in productivity, her narratives are constantly evolving and refuse to gel to any mold. Her characters range anywhere from young schoolgirls and housewives to boxers and rapists to kittens. "She reinvents herself three or four times a year as a writer," Halpern says. "She was a born writer, so she's always had a sense of merit in how to tell a story and draw characters that were different from each other and came alive on the page." He says that the novel Blonde, Oates's 737-page ode to Marilyn Monroe that was a 2000 National Book Award finalist, proves her mastery as a storyteller and reveals her growth as a writer. "The structure of Blonde I don't think she could've written twenty years ago," he says.
The next novel, Middle Age: A Romance, due out in October, takes yet another spin through American existence, but may reflect a kinder, gentler Oates. She suggests that these days she's more idealistic and romantic about writing, and perhaps even about life, than she was decades ago. "Why this is," she says, "I don't know."
She does know that the new novel will be a humorous and loving examination of the lasting friendships of a group of middle-aged men and women. "It's a much more upbeat and positive sort of narrative than people identify with her," Halpern says. "Nothing terrible happens to any of the characters." Well, except for the primary character's drowning at the beginning of the book, he admits, and another character's fatal mauling by his wife's dogs. "Otherwise, it's a happy ending." (Kristin Kloberdanz)
ar_t
Posted December 5, 2011
This is a compelling yet completely heartbreaking novel. In We Were the Mulvaneys, Oates creates an idyllic family with a peaceful, happy life, and depicts the family members¿ simultaneous demises after Marianne, their daughter, is raped at a party after prom. As the Mulvaneys fall from their previous social standing and each undergo personal struggles involving recovery and justice, Oates touches on all aspects of family issues. From alcoholism, to violence, depression, anxiety, and separation, she leaves absolutely nothing out. The effect is a book that will ¿Break your heart, heal it, then break it again,¿ as a reviewer from the Los Angeles Times Book Review put it. Though it¿s not a book to read on a sunny day when you¿re in a good mood, We Were the Mulvaneys is honest, insightful, and powerful. It will make you think about the connections between family members in ways you never have before.
6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 30, 2006
This book is my favorite. Not only is it written by the amazing Joyce Carol Oates, but because it is a story that haunts me everyday. I recommend this book to everyone. We Were the Mulvaneys is phychologically deep and timeless. It has definetly left a mark on my heart.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.i had to read We Were the Mulvaneys for school , and i must admit i found it hard to read. The beginning of the book, though a little too off topic at times, i found very interesting and i fell in love with not exacty a particular character, but how they all interact with each other. The second half of the book got a little boring, but seeing the characters who seem indistrucable crumble, and the ones who seem to be weak break free of your judgments inspired me. While reading this book i felt many emotions, and it even made me cry. seeing how one person can effect the lives of so many others and watching characters struggle to grow, to become who they are in the end, was amazing. i think the books end was much to sudden, and worked out a little to well, and didnt even really tie up all loose ends. Sometimes characters especially Marianne we hard to relate to, but somehow it kept me into the bok. the book did NOT make me want never put it down, its deffintinly the type of pook you need a break from, but overall, i think it was worthwhile because the lessons in the book and the charactrs in the book have seemed to wedged themselves into my heart, and i dont think ill soon forget them.
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 11, 2005
In We Were the Mulvaneys, Oates makes you as the reader feel as if you are part of the Mulvaney family. When the family is broken apart you feel broken along with them. This book will keep you turning the pages for hours.
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 15, 2005
Oates¿s artistic, descriptive writing style allows the reader to feel the settings involved in the story. A truly wonderful book that makes the reader sense they are actually involved in the emotional tragedies and triumphs of the story. This is an empathetic story which makes one envision the Mulvaneys as their own neighbors.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 1, 2004
This book keeps you enthralled from beginning to end. Oates is a great author and I can't wait to read more of her books. This book has amazing characters and is really touching.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 23, 2003
'We were the Mulvaneys, remember us?' Thats how the story started, and thats exactly what caught me because no, I did not know them, but simply by asking, it made me think that they were supposedly well-known. I read this book when I was 15, and again now, 2 years later, and am also doing a research paper on Joyce Carol Oates and actually set up an interview with her, since she's only half an hour away in Princeton. WE WERE THE MULVANEYS was one of the best books I've ever read. The characters were so vivid and so many experiences were displayed so that the reader knew each character well, as if known personally, so that when the downfall of the Mulvaney family- a prosperous, popular family- occurs, it leaves the reader so moved and upset. And that is what great writing is.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 11, 2003
My mother and I are both avid readers- we're having a hard time finding anything else even remotely interesting after reading 'We Were the Mulvaneys.' It keeps you thinking for months...
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 16, 2003
I love this Oates novel because it tells a story that is relatable - something that some of Oate's novels don't possess. I believe Oates to be a gifted writer, and even though I may not enjoy each of her storylines, I read them, appreciating her ability to manipulate the written word.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 4, 2003
I had a few problems with Judd as the narrator...there are times when the story is just begging to be told from the viewpoint of Corinne, of Patrick, and even of Marianne (especially when she visits Patrick in Ithaca) but my criticisms are few. This book is powerful in ways that many books are not but should strive to be. This family that has hidden the cracks in its exterior for so long and lived an idyllic existence in 'paradise' is forced to come face to face with a forced reality that rips to shreds everything that they were. All of this is done with a reality that is chilling and engrossing all at once.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 24, 2003
Sometimes when a woman is raped everything around her changes, including her family. This is what exactly happened to the fictional Mulvaney family in 'We Were The Mulvaneys.' Author Joyce Carol Oates takes you into the world of the once close-knit Mulvaney clan through the voice of younger brother Judd Mulvaney. Told in a clearly written and mature voice, you feel the pain Judds' family goes through when they all learn his older sister, Marianne, is raped. From then on, you notice the family drift apart to spiral out of control. For the three weeks I read, 'We Were The Mulvaneys,' I could not put this book down. I was gripped to the very end.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 17, 2002
I was so affected by this novel, that I felt emotionally drained when I finished. I couldn't begin another book for awhile, because I was so overcome with emotion reading this one. Not a book to be read when one wants a light, easy read. This is, in my opinion, a masterpiece.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 24, 2012
This is well-written and engrossing BUT do not expect a light, entertaining read. I found in impossible to not bond with this family!
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Posted March 20, 2012
The story is just so incredibly depressing. It drags along breaking down this poor girl (the main character) and never really building her back up. It destroys her entire family and gives them no real opportunity for redemention. It is an incredibly cynical look at family ties.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 17, 2011
the ups and downs of the Mulvaney's were intriguing. this story just carried me along to the end in no time.
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Posted February 6, 2011
This is a wonderfully written story with great character development. It follows the Mulvaney family through good times and bad and somehow endears each one of them to the reader. It's a compelling read from the first page to the last.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This was an Oprah's Book Club choice. This was featured in a summer read section of a magazine. I had it, so I read it. For all the hype, I was disappointed. I didn't particularly enjoy the plot, the characters, the twists. The mother particularly annoyed me, and I didn't feel she was a good woman or was undeserving of the bad luck that seemed to surround her. I was relieved when it was over, if only so that characters Patrick and Marianne would be able to move on with their lives, and me onto a better book. I would not pick up another book by this author.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 25, 2010
This story is a book about a family and their hardships. The daughter in the family was raped and this event changes the entire families lives. They all get angry (which is understandable) and the book goes on to talk about the revenge the family seeks. I think this book had a good idea but I thought the story was very long and drawn out. I thought this story was boring and the book was hard to get through. I usually love Oprah's book recommendations but not this one. I was disappointed, don't waste your time.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 7, 2010
This is a story of a family, but nothing very exciting happens, except for mayber 1 or 2 chapters. It took an effort on my part to finish, and I couldn't wait to preiew this one. It just is so slow moving and really not that great of a story. I know many, many families that would have made a much better story; and the way it is written in a narrative form by the youngest child. There is no way he could have known what was in each of his siblings heads. Why didn't Ms. Oates write each chapter as a narrative in the first person. I don't get it. It just didn't make much sense to me all around.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Yet another book that held my interest for the first half, but the second half left me wishing that I had not wasted my time. At first I felt a strong connection to the characters, so I expected the second half to provide a satisfying resolution. But there was absolutely no resolution for the girl's rape and subsequent rejection. The author tore down the character, then never built her back up. The overly simplistic ending was a major cop-out. If all you are looking for is a happy ending (with no explanation), you will love this book.
On second thought, just jump to the last chapter and don't bother with the other 400 some pages.
Overview