Rating: 
Summary: Unbelievable dysfunction!
Review: I bought this book because of Oprah's recommendation and mostly because Joyce Carol Oates wrote it. The early "Father Knows Best" life of this family was too good to be true. Give me a break! All that love and laughter and attention to animals without any bickering or arguments or disagreements in a family with four siblings. After the event that changes their lives, the reaction of the members of the family is unrealistic - particularly the daughter herself! Her reaction to what happens to her is completely unbelievable, particularly when it seemed she was so-o-o- close to her mother and adored by her father - a dispicable loser if I ever read about one. You might say it was a good book because it aroused such negative, depressing feelings by me. Not true. This family was dysfunctional from the beginning because the good life that Ms. Oates presented was not to be believed. No family is like the Mulvaneys endlessly loving each other, smiling, getting along so perfectly. No wonder the family could not survive when a tragedy occurred. A great disappointment from a long time Oates fan.
Rating: 
Summary: Warning! *SUCH* a bad reading experience!!
Review: Yuck.A family of unappealing characters with pitiable interpersonal skills live in a junk-cluttered, animal-fur covered (I couldn't stop thinking how smelly) purple house out in the boonies. Some pathetically stupid high school students make the predictable dumb mistakes, and launch this family into several decades of evil deeds towards each other that display their deplorable morals and illustrate how dysfunctional they were from the very start. (What do you expect from parents that address their children through their pets??) I didn't believe once in their "gift for happiness": those people were not likeable and certainly not enviable as narrator Judd claims. Oates over-worked that point, and then drags readers through one pathetic turn after another until, in the last 15 pages, everything suddenly, implausibly, becomes sunny and rosy, forgiven and healed. Too late: the reader is so beyond nauseated to as be incapable of sharing in the apparent relief and re-birth the characters ostensibly enjoy at an overdue family reunion. I hated it. Oates uses silly techniques which makes things worse. For example, the narrator begins his self-righteous and bitter story by taking the reader on a driving tour of his hometown. So trite -- it goes so far as to include the directions! Then it gets worse: I was repeatedly frustrated and infuriated by the excessive use of foreshadowing, fragmented memory and flashback to build up events. Ultimately, the events were never fully brought to light as they end up being obscured by useless tangents that are cluttered with digressions and idiotic descriptions of irrelevant details. Moreover, it was supremely irritating to have to skim 25% of the text to skip over pointless character-developments of pets and the mother's antiques/junk. I don't recommend this book to anyone. Rather, I DISrecommend it as the worst book I have ever forced myself to read (I had to for a book club). It digs up that gray, bitter, ugly feeling of remembering something or someone bad that you have worked long and hard to forget about or grow out of. Painful, pathetic, useless, just pray it'll fade away.
Rating:
Summary: Oates Seeks Revenge
Review: Ms. Oates has a deep seated contempt for the middle American family. With this story Oates expresses her contempt by concocting a family that for all their initial outward success cannot connect with, much less help, each other. The author believes that families cannot overcome obstacles and heal from their wounds. She depicts middle American families as jealous, competitive, and especially from a Mother to daughter, unloving.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful and Compelling
Review: Perhaps we would like to believe that our lives are linear and therefore a story should follow the same route--but they are not, our lives are weaved through others, and memories and recollections bounce back and forth, and when you're reading this book you're not simply seeing it for the first time, you're remembering too. It is sad, but at the same time, a story, a compelling and beautifully written story that speaks to you, and ofcourse it might be depressing, because you feel the family's pain--you want to go back to when they were a family, happy, because Oates lets you see that, and only when it begins to fall apart, there's this frantic notion to go back to the other pages, and try to remember what they remember, the good times. It's terrific writing, excellent storytelling and it will open your heart.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good -- perhaps not for everyone
Review: Although I found the story to be heavily (almost overly) detailed and full of flashbacks, I appreciated the way that Oates allowed the reader to get to know each character intimately. How sad that a family so close and seemingly unbreakable could let tragedy stand in the way of strength and healing. Any book that makes me want to jump inside the pages and react to a character or situation -- have my say, punch them out, hug them, tell them they are wrong -- is a book that has heart. Throughout the book I felt a closeness to Judd -- the baby of the family -- as I am. His eagerness for information and acceptance touched me. I felt sympathy for Marianne, although she certainly didn't ask for it. Corrine and Michael Sr. were a mixed bag -- if only they could have be realistic in their expectations of child-rearing and life in general! Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone wanting a story -- but not to anyone looking for immediate fictional gratification.
Rating: 
Summary: A new form of depressing
Review: I have to admit this is the first book I have ever read in which I felt compelled to write a review. I am an avid reader and my tastes are very eclectic so I was suprised by my emotions upon reading this book. It was the first novel of Joyce Carol Oates that I had read so I didn't really know what to expect. But I had always heard she was a very fine writer so I figured I'd give it a try. Also, I have read many of Oprah's book club selections and generally found them fine. This book is the exception. It may be the most depressing, disappointing book I have ever read. I realize its a dark subject, rape, however I didn't know it was possible to take a dark subject like this and take it to an even lower level. I found the treatment of Marianne by her parents, particularly her mother to be both unrealistic as well as borderline criminal. I realize that things like this happen in "the real world". However, this is fiction. To portray this family for the first 150 pages or so as "perfect", to show them with incredibly strong emotions and lovingness in one part of the book and to switch midstream as Oates did and not only do a 360 degree change was completely outside the realm of realism within this story. Of course I realize that parents might react as the Mulvaney's did upon the rape of their child. However, there was absolutely nothing in these parents character to suggest that this was remotely possible.When Corinne sent her supposed "beloved" daughter away, I threw the book down in disgust. Both because I felt it was a horrible betrayal by a mother but more importantly from a reviewers point of view, a betrayal by Oates of the readers. It just didn't ring true and appeared to me to be a device. I don't know how or why I finished the rest of the book, probably just to see if it could be redeemed from that point on. I shouldn't have bothered. Once the "reality" of the book is shattered you can't get it back. It set the tone and was downhill from there. This may just be the most depressing novel I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: A Modern-Day Reprise of Dreiser
Review: This book is hauntingly familiar to Dreiser's "An American Tragedy." Four children, their parents and a marriage are all sacrificed on the pyre of the parents' self-perceived image in the community and Joyce Carol Oates is an author who is powerful enough to make us feel their initial disbelief and subsequent pain following "the incident." I found Michael Sr. to be the most dislikable character because he used the rape of his daughter to justify his own very despicable behavior when he was needed the most and the daughter to be the character most deserving of our compassion. This is a book that will make its readers take a good, hard look at the depth of their own meaningful relationships to see if they would survive a devestation of the magnitude suffered by the Mulvaneys. This book is about people who prefer to maintain appearances at all cost and the cost is, indeed, very dear.
Rating:
Summary: What a downer!!
Review: First of all, HOW MANY EXCLAMATION MARKS CAN ONE AUTHOR USE IN ONE BOOK????????? I found the narrative to be completely distracting. Now, I really thought I was going to like this book. Sounded interesting, right? What could the terrible event be that tears apart this seemingly unbreakable family? (Plus, I've been, almost unerringly, happy with Oprah's book club choices - I think she does a fabulous job of choosing books.) Well, once the event (I won't give it away, although it ends up being completely predictable) happens, I found this book to be an unbelievable downer. Can NOTHING good happen to this family? I also found the father, Michael Sr.'s, actions after "it" happened to be unrealistic. If the man was that unstable, his characterization at the beginning of the book should have been different. The most frustrating things for me about this book were that 1) Again, I must mention all of the exclamation marks - they were distracting and unneccesary. 2) I found all of the characters unlikable more than likeable. The two female characters, Corinne and Marianne, were SO weak it made me want to slap them, and none of the male characters were all that wonderful - I certainly wouldn't have wanted any of them in MY family! 3) There is no light at the end of the tunnel. I don't by any means expect a happy ending in all the books I read. But wow - couldn't ANYONE in this family catch a break? Did they ALL have to fall apart and be miserable? Until the very end - the family picnic - there was just no happiness for any of these characters and it was SO draining. And that, my friends, would be the one adjective I would use to describe this book - DRAINING.
Rating:
Summary: Depressing
Review: Such a dark story. An incredibly sad account of what can happen when there is no communication. I found this book to be VERY wordy with alot of unnecessary flashbacks. I found myself depressed by the depth of loss this family endured simply because it couldn't come to terms with an unspeakable act. I'd have a hard time recommending this book to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: midwest reader
Review: I was drawn into "We Were The Mulvaneys" by the practiced hand of Joyce Carol Oates. This is my first reading of her work and I found it frustrating, propelling, discouraging, lucid, dreamlike and cathartic all at once. Oates has a gift for pulling the rug out from under the reader by clever use of plot, language and structure. My only complaint is that some scenes approach a Mitchner-style of writing that can be tedious. The rise and fall of the Mulvaneys captures well the unspoken struggle of many American families. Our childlike minds assume so much about ourselves and about others and form beliefs, like Corinne's fireflies. But sometimes things happen that test those beliefs and we are left confused and lost. This story demonstrates over and over again that belief and reality must fight it out if we are ever to find our way. When put to the test, the idyllic Mulvaney family came undone like so many silk knots. Everything had to be questioned; the existence of God, the loyalty of family and friends, the strength of community, the responsibility to one's self in conflict with our responsibility to others. Frankly, it was a wild ride. I found the heroism of the children amazing as they struggled to find their way with poor parental models and many times without each other. The rebirth of Patrick in the swamp is the most powerful writing I've ever cried through. Hate and fear, love and betrayal, courage and devotion, I thought it was a wonderful ride.
|
