Rating: 
Summary: BRILLIANT BUT FLAWED
Review: Joyce Carol Oates is indeed a wonderful writer - but even wonderful writers have their flaws.
I found 'We Were the Mulvaneys' infuriating at times, especially the endless descriptions of the farm and the countless animals. (I wouldn't have minded picking Muffin up by the tail and flinging him out the window.) The sentimental details of life on High Point Farm were lovely, but would have been better in moderation.
The male characters were very well drawn and they developed quite well as the book progressed, but Corrine and Marianne stayed exactly the same throughout the whole book. A rape victim who has been shunned by her family would not sail sweetly through life without bitterness or anger. Marianne is too much of a saint and should have had to learn a few lessons about being assertive before she found true happiness.
Why was Patrick's girlfriend Katya featured so heavily during the last pages? Katya is a very minor character, and I wanted to know more about Marianne's resolutions with the family.
Saying this, I still think that the book is worth reading, if only to learn a bit more about human nature.
Rating:
Summary: Great Story in Too Many Words
Review: As soon as I began reading this book I already knew it was going to be too "wordy". The beginning described in minute detail the landscape surrounding the Mulvaney home. In my humble opinion only a very few authors can get away with such detail without completely boring their reader.
Despite that, I kept reading the book and have to say that I finished it. The fact that I finished it was a miracle because I couldn't wait for it to end since at every reading session I became exhausted of the re-iteration of storyline. However, having finished the book despite my frustrations with it says much about the story at hand. If you want a family story that portrays the good stuff as well as shows the bad stuff, this is the book for you. Plus, this is a book we can all relate to. However, as I've said, it dragged on a bit too much for me.
In short, it is a great story of a very interesting and familiar-like family, but much too drawn out. I would have LOVED it if it were 200 pages shorter.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious Without Payoff
Review: This book is the literary equivalent of televised sports...3 hours of broadcast devoted to 3 minutes of action of any interest or bearing on the outcome. While a study of the dysfunction beneath a "perfect family" veneer could have been an engrossing subject, the way the dysfunction plays out in these particular characters is completely ludicrous. I was unable to muster any compassion for the Mulvaneys, who struck me as just plain stupid as opposed to emotionally scarred. Sprinkled here and there are glimmers leading you to imagine some interesting plot twist possibilities ahead, but apparently none of them occurred to the author because none of them ever develop. The tedious writing style gives you the sense that you need to absorb and track the e-x-h-a-u-s-t-i-v-e detail and endless tangential thoughts expressed by every character (including farm animals and pets!), as if these will somehow become important later. They don't. There's always the possibility that I entirely missed the point of this book. I'll take that chance rather than wade through this book a second time.
Rating: 
Summary: why is this book so long, I wish I can get to...
Review: I couldn't put this book down and I also couldn't wait for the end. I keep flipping the pages to the end to find out what was going to happen. Doing so I had to go back and continue from where I left off. I felt I had to know how that ending had came about. I actually felt like "why is this book so long I wish I could already get to the end." Despite my impatience and unconventional reading style I felt this was one of the best books I had come across in a long while (months, at least). It is so....melodramatic, so human, so real. Very much like a drama anthology, whose stories are commonly enjoyed in the Philippines and Latin America.
Rating: 
Summary: WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO----
Review: As an author with my debut novel in initial release, I genuinely admire the works of Joyce Carol Oates in general and her novel WE WERE THE MULVANEYS in particular. In this novel, Ms. Oates takes an seemingly ideal American family and forces them to confront disaster. When WE WERE THE MULVANEYS opens, all is well in this Garden of Eden. After decades of marriage, the elder Mulvaneys are still deeply in love. They have three children--an admired valedictorian, a star athlete, and a popular cheerleader. Then a date rape occurs, and disaster begins to spiral out of control. Ms. Oates paces her plot well. Her characters are perfectly rendered. Her fiction seems real. A great book, exactly what we have grown to expect from Joyce Carol Oates.
Rating:
Summary: this story broke my heart
Review: This book broke my heart. The story of Marianne & her abandonment by her parents was one of the saddest & most frustrating stories I've ever read. It made me angry & sad, & I'm not sure with who I'm angry: the fictional characters, Corinne & Mike Mulvaney, or merely Joyce Carol Oates for setting this whole story up & then leaving so many lose ends, so many things unexplained.I can't really decide whether I loved or hated "We were the Mulvaneys". I read it in one sitting, after a slow start (the book takes a while to "get rolling" but once it draws you in, it's a quick & easy read). The storyline is simple--a (supposedly) happy american family, with 4 kids, starts disintegrating & finally falls apart after the only daughter gets raped. .... For many people who read the book, this decision, to send Marianne away, was hard to swallow, & ruined the whole story for them. For me, this was just the point of the book, the heart of the story, the heart of the dysfunction of this family. Other things troubled me though, mainly that the book could have taken off from that point on, but didn't. One thing I liked is that Joyce Carol Oates describes the characters beautifully. Particularly the character of Marianne comes to life. As I said, she broke my heart completely, even though her character was not very close to reality. Patrick was the one of the 3 brothers that I found the most interesting, a tough, introverted intellectual who gets torn apart between his devotion to science & his yearning for spirit & meaning to life. This issue is treated intelligently in the book, although I didn't feel it was resolved in the end. But then again, the science vs. religion issue can never be totally resolved, just discussed. The 2 other brothers were more like caricatures & I fail to understand why the story was supposedly told through the eyes of the youngest brother. It didn't seem like he was talking half of the time, & anyway--his character never really came to life. For me, the most important & meaningful theme of the book was the issue of the "image" that a family can often strive to achieve & show others. Not only show other people, but also show the family members, making the point, again & again, of the perfection & absolute happiness that the family has achieved. Living for & through this image (this fake image, because in truth, perfection is never possible) can be hard & sometimes can alienate people from each other. Acceptance of people (& family members) as they really are is harder work, but much more meaningful, & it's were the Mulvaneys failed miserably. One major complaint for me was the happy ending. At some point in the book, it felt like Oates was trying to "hurry up & tie up some lose ends". These lose ends though failed to get tied up, & the ending seemed just unreal & improbable. It ruined the impression the book left me with, although I still enjoyed the journey.
Rating:
Summary: Very disturbing...vintage Oates!
Review: While the beginning was a bit slow, I eventually found myself glued to the pages screaming (in my head) at the characters response to the 'rape.' How very sad, to lose happiness in so many lives. How very Oates to dissect their pain to the very core. If you want a happy feel-good book, skip this one. If you want good literature and a disturbing tale, snap it up!
Rating: 
Summary: Poked Along
Review: My first time to read Ms. Oates, and unforunately, I was rather disappointed. The story when on forever, the plot lines when all over the place and I never felt much compassion for any member of the Mulvaney family. Way too much description and not enough detail in story content.
Rating:
Summary: Not your basic fluff
Review: If you had a hard time getting through this one or gave up after only a few pages, perhaps you should consider purchasing your future reading material from the checkout stand at your local supermarket. This is not a simple "feel good" kind of book. It makes you think and consider people, places and things that you normally wouldn't. I think Oates does an outstanding job of bringing the Mulvaney family as well as High Point Farm to life. If you had a hard time believing that the father would turn on his daughter you must have missed all of the references to his relationship with his father. History will repeat itself, it always has and always will.
Rating:
Summary: Absolute rubbish!
Review: What a horrible book! I love to read but getting through this book was nothing short of tedious. I kept waiting for it to get better . . . it never did. First of all, the structure of the chapters made the story move painfully slow. The book constantly back tracked to years past. It made it difficult to muster up any emotion for what was happening to the family because the emotion kept getting lost for me by the story lines changing. Secondly, I never "took to" any of the characters. In most books there is one character or another who readers can relate to or take a liking to. That never happened with this novel. And lastly, the sentence structure was poor which also made it difficult to read. Sorry, Ms. Oates. Better luck next time.
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