Rating: 
Summary: What Should a Great Book Be?
Review: The Mulvaneys are a family worth reading about. The question is, how much of this book is actually about the Mulvaneys? The beginning draws us a terrific picture of how wonderful things were before "it" happened. The end tells of how great everything is after everything. The middle groans loud and long...slow and dreary. I walk away from this book thinking that I don't know the Mulvaneys at all. I can picture their farm and I have a crude map of their town, but the people are a little vague. The book was well written but the story was weak. I gave it three stars because it caused me to think, it fired some emotions, and I didn't stop reading it (if it's a 1 or a 2 you really should put it down). What makes a great book? A terrific tale. This one was not it.
Rating:
Summary: Unhappily ever after...
Review: I kept hoping that dear old dad would come to his senses. Alas, he is doomed to hell. His kids are doomed to hate him (except Marianne) and his wife is...just doomed. Marianne is a modern day Joan of Arc. Forever breaking your heart and living in a dream world, you want to shake her and say "STOP! Get on with your life!" But you aren't allowed to understand her except as a religious icon. For me, the best part of the book is the last 100 pages when the family comes together again and Marianne is miraculously "born again". Joyce Carol Oates has a jaundiced eye view of life. Brilliant but sad.
Rating: 
Summary: We Were The Mulvaney's
Review: I personally didn't care for the book. It is a very slow read and took me forever to read it as i could not get into it. Not one of the finest books for Oprah to put in her book club. This book was about a family who was torn apart based on something tragic that happened to one of the family members. It is about betrayal, loyalty and mistrust. The story unfolds as Oates writes about what happens to the family in the years after the tragedy. The family, in my opinion, is very strange and did not react the way that a normal family would react.
Rating: 
Summary: A poignant tale of a family who has loved and lost.
Review: There isn't much better writing out there. The Mulvaney story is the story of any of us who once had a close family and lost it. Joyce Carol Oates writes with a flair and a depth that touches the soul. A one-time tragedy becomes a lifetime legacy, as the Mulvaney's struggle with emotions and feelings they never knew existed when one of their own is hurt. The tragedy affects each family member in such profound ways; you will find yourself alternately rooting them on and silently sad for their plight. Each character is developed to perfection, even the supporting characters, and the story reads like a well-oiled machine. Most touching of all is Mike Mulvaney Sr., a man with so much love and so much promise, in the end a tragic figure as he struggles with his own role as a father, a husband, and a man. Mikey Jr, Patrick, Judd, and Marianne, the four siblings, are each in their own way connected to the one trauma the family just cannot sort out, and the far reaching effects branch out into their lives with a stranglehold. Our heroine is Mom, Corinne Mulvaney, and the twists and turns surrounding this strong yet mild character will keep you turning page after page. This is a sad story, yet one with more courage and more hope in its pages than you could read in a lifetime.
Rating:
Summary: I almost didn't buy this book
Review: Having given up on several of Oates' books in the past because of the relentless gloom of the stories she was telling and/or the endless narration, I was dubious about "Mulvaney's." But it was an Oprah Book Club selection and generally Oprah's picks are easy reads, quirky and usually uplifting. Yet I read negative review after negative review from Amazon readers. There was much complaint about how depressing the book was, how it rambled on and on with no obvious purpose. The reviews seemed to confirm my earlier impressions of Oates' books. However, I finally couldn't resist buying it. It wasn't quite as ponderous as some of Oates' books I had attempted earlier and the first few paragraphs were intriguing. Imagine my surprise when I found that I could hardly wait to get back to it every night. The criticisms of the family being too good to be true and then becoming too dysfunctional to be true seem to come from readers who missed the many clues that the Mulvaney's were not such a perfect family. That golden depiction of the early period was how the family seemed through the eyes of a child, a child who sees everything through the prism of innocence and wonder. The reaction of the parents and siblings to the family tragedy was not what we would like to see or idealistically what we think we should or would do. It very much parallels the end of childhood when innocence is lost. Life is not a warm and fuzzy, cute and quirky TV sitcom with predictable twists and turns. I found the evolution of the various members of the Mulvaney family to have the authority of what real life is like. We don't always -- heck, we don't usually choose the noble or sensible path. We are driven by strengths and weaknesses we are hardly aware of. Life is messy and confounding. Even the last chapter is believable because I have seen similar evolutions in my sixty-plus years of living in a family and being intimately involved with other families. Will life for the Mulvaneys after the reunion continue the happy promise of that 4th of July? Probably not. Life IS messy and unpredictable. In the world of grown-ups things do not always come out with the ends all neatly tied in a bow. "We Were The Mulvaneys" is one Joyce Carol Oates book I really enjoyed. Maybe I'll go back and take another look at the ones I didn't finish years ago.
Rating:
Summary: Slow moving, doen't ring true
Review: This is the first book I have read by this much acclaimed author, and I was disappointed. The book was padded with tedious and unnecessary exposition. I found the shifts in point of view, often just as things were starting to get interesting, distracting and frustrating. Seldom have I wanted to skip over parts or skim as much as I wanted to while reading this book. I could have handled all that though, but the characters were not at all believable. Each and every one did a complete about-face in character and personality with little or no explanation. The parents' banishment of the daughter made no sense, particularly considering the time frame of the novel and their nonconformist values in the beginning of the book. I kept thinking,"Why the heck didn't they just move the whole family?" No answer. Hard as she tries to make the parents' sympathetic, they seem to me cruel,selfish monsters with inexplicable motivations. That image just doesn't jibe in any way, shape or form with the parents she originally presents. The daughter's placid, unquestioning acceptance of her "punishment" made even less sense. Each brother seemed to undergo a radical transformation as well, again with no plausible explanation. I understand Oates' point, that an event such as this can change the family dynamics and alter the course of many lives, but she makes the point with all the sublety of a sledgehammer.
Rating:
Summary: Characters Not Believable
Review: This is the first book I have read by this much-acclaimed author, and I was disappointed. I felt the book was padded with quite a lot of unnecessary exposition that slowed the story down considerably (how many times and in how much detail do I have to hear about the lavender color of the house?) I also felt that most, if not all, of the characters, pulled abrubt about-faces in the book with no plausible explanation whatsoever, most notably an apparently devoted mother and father banishing their own child for an act committed against him/her. Certainly I understood the stigma the author tried to attach to the incident, but I had a hard time believing that these two people, in the 1970's, (not the Victorian era, for goodness sake)would have rather never seen their child again than face the disapproval of their neighbors. Why the heck didn't they just move the whole family? And once the whole thing became irrelevant in their lives, why did they make no effort to patch things up with the child? Just didn't make sense to me, that two supposedly wonderful parents would turn into such monsters in the face of their child's pain. Also didn't believe in the saintliness of said child in never questioning or being angry at their actions. All three brothers seemed to go completely against their established character traits as well. Oates's point was obvious-that an incident such as what occured in the book changes the family and the individual dynamics forever, but she made her point, in my opinion, with all the sublety of a sledgehammer.
Rating:
Summary: I hate when people tug at my heartstrings
Review: At first I enjoyed the book a lot. It took me into a world of a beautiful farm and a beautiful farm family, far from suburban southern California where I live. However, after sticking through to the end, I felt I had wasted my time. Without giving away the ending too much, I have to say that I felt that the book was written in a formulaic Oprah-book style-- mean abusive men, women who are innocent and wronged greatly by the men. While great fiction gives us a view into the lives and struggles of others, this book failed in that I didn't feel that some of the characters and their reactions in the book were realistic-- would the mother really remain that clueless? Would the father have really been that heartless? Would a family in the late 70's in the United States really deal that badly with a rape in the family. I hated having my emotions drug through the mud over something that I felt was not very realistic. It was overall a very depressing book. I woke up the next morning after I finished feeling very, very depressed, and then realized that I had sort of a hangover from the book.
Rating: 
Summary: We were the Mulvaneys
Review: I am almost finished reading this book. It is a pretty amazing description of how families see themselves and define themselves among others. I like how the writer shifts the perspective among different members of the family although there were times I would be annoyed at the deliberate buildup of tension and then the abrupt shift to another perspective right at a climactic moment. (It kind of reminded me of the artificial suspense created on television right before they shift to a commercial). I am enjoying the second half of the book much more than the first half. As the individual members of the family weaken and desintegrate under pressure; they also become more than the sit-commish stereotypes of the first half of the book. Yeah, I wanted to hit the parents over the head with a shovel too (as another reviewer said); but they were acting like real, albeit imperfect people. As the family breaks apart; the daughter with her shorn scalp and inability to form permanent relationships, the University son incapable of "normalcy" but capable of kidnapping, the brutish and self-destructive father, and the mother in total denial living off the vestiges of her shattered image of their "family", you have to wonder if this wouldn't have happened even if the daughter hadn't been date-raped... Even when they "were the Mulvaneys", the females (both Mother and daughter) were completely self negating and the parents formed relationships based more on image than real connection. The seeds of destruction were present from the very beginning...
Rating: 
Summary: Just didn't like it
Review: As soon as this book became available, I wanted to get it. I am so suprised at how disappointed I am in the novel. We were the Mulvaneys was a long, dragged out story about a disfunctional family that never sees closure. Sure, that I how life is sometimes, but each character develops into a complete pile of nothing. I found myself avoiding the book, not wanting to drudge through the pages for another day. This is usually not the case with me. I wanted to complete the story and found it an incredible effort. I shared it with my book-buddy, and she had the same reaction. Sorry Ms. Oates, it's just a matter of taste I think. See you in your next novel.
| 
