Rating: 
Summary: Enough, already!!
Review: Frustrating, I think is the best way to describe this book. Although it is well written, and at times you can feel like you are in the kitchen with these characters, I found this book exhausting. It seemed like everything bad that could happen, did happen to these people, and in the end there was little pay off for all of that suffering. I personally don't mind depressing things happening to characters, but this was annoying. If you are looking for an interesting and realistic story, I would reccomend " I Know This Much Is True" by Wally Lamb as a much better choice than this.
Rating: 
Summary: A sad but engaging tale of a small town family
Review: I really enjoyed this book. The characters reminded me of the quintessential family that most of us would like to be a part of in some way. The only thing I was a bit confused about was the family all seemed to be close knit and supportive of each other no matter the circumstances. The children and mother were particularly interesting and their personalities well developed. However, when the daughter was in crisis the father complety alienated her. I did not understand the reason for his behavior. Especially when the rest of the family seemed so ready to help. I think the author needed to let us know why it was the father behaved this way. I would have liked to know more about his past. Another reviewer of this book pointed out that Corrine(the mother) picked her husband over the kids. I agree that was a big mistake. My experience as been that the children most often come first. Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who likes reading about the joys and heartaches of a small town family.
Rating:
Summary: Families are like quilts, they need constant care......
Review: A families life can be compared to an old quilt. Each piece of cloth is unique unto itself. It is all held together by a simple strand of thread, and what happens when the thread is weak or damaged and allowed to come apart instead of being repaired quickly is a sad event to observe. This is a hard, sad story about a family in upstate New York. What seems to be a wonderful family picture emerges, of a loving mom and dad, four charming children, a star athlete son, an intellectual son, a smart, beautiful daughter and the "baby" who is the "teller of the tale". Their life on a beautiful farm seems to be perfect. What evolves is stunning. When the daughter, Marianne comes home after a dance and has been sexually assaulted (she never states she was or wasn't raped, but it was vicious), the family literally disintegrates. The details in the story fill in the family picture and give you an intimate view into their lives together and apart. You see the way each member of the Mulvaney family deals with the changes and challenges presented to them, each in their own way. Does the fact that the father was disowned and abandoned by his father when he was a teenager give root to the way Michael Sr. handles his family, ie. you can take someone away from the dysfunctional family, but can you take the dysfunctional family out of that person? Michael Sr. starts off in this story as a successful businessman and feels the need to back up the look of success by joining different clubs, not satisfied until he has been accepted into the pinnacle of clubs in his town. As for the mom, Corinne, does her fatalistic faith come from strength or weakness? Why do they feel that blessings bestowed on them are accidents, that they are not worthy? Is it a self fulfilling prophecy for this family, or one that can be avoided with a lot of love, strength and patience? The story is woven together through the past and present, each chapter a vignette of a unique happening in the lives of the Mulvaneys. This novel made me angry and sad. It was full of choices that were ignored or ababandoned and in the end made me wonder why this family made the choices they each made, vastly touching each others lives with a shattering power. Joyce Carol Oates is an amazing author to be able to draw such deep emotion from the reader.
Rating:
Summary: A decent Oprah pick
Review: In We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates shows us how lives can change in an instant. From one horrible incident, an entire family's existence disintegrates into nothingness with no possible way back. Mom and Dad Mulvaney are the happy overseers of their four children's lives and rural farm when their only daughter, Marianne, is raped after a high school dance. Each family member reacts in their own way, some escaping, some plotting vengeance and some avoiding the issue completely. Marianne's parents actually send her away, her sight a torture for them. Eventually, the family is able to mend some fences, but at the loss of many years of family togetherness. Although I did enjoy Oates' descriptions of the landscape and scenes, I thought this novel was extremely drawn out, with the climax occurring with 150 pages left in the novel. I was slightly disappointed but thought the book worth the time.
Rating:
Summary: My first Oates novel NOT a disappointment!
Review: I have never read anything by Joyce Carol Oates and was given this book as a gift. I admit to being impressed by Oates' dexterity with the scope and sprawl of the narrative and her capability to fully portray her character's lives and emotions. Oates has a peculiarly simplistic writing style that only serves to emphasize whatever emotion or situation she's trying to describe - her style makes the catastrophic events of the story seem evem more momentous when they finally occur. She is also one of a few authors that I've read that are capable of evoking palpable pity from the reader. Her characters are truly and fully formed in the sense that the reader is able to understand their great loves as well as their failures, and peer into their lives to see the course of their own destruction. This book is not easily dismissed as a family chronicle - it is a compelling investigation into the tenuous bonds that keep a family together, the complex relationships between family members, and, ultimately, the reasons behind the personal choices that each individual makes in the name of survival.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting read
Review: I began reading Oprah books just for the need of a recommendation - and this one is certainly fitting to her selections. If you're looking for a dark, insightful, depressing and yet hopeful story, We Were the Mulvaney's is a novel for you. A coming of age story, for all the characters, We Were the Mulvaney's is a tribute to the fact that life goes on - whether we'd like it to or not, and certainly not in the way we'd expect it to. A family struck by tradgedy deals with it in the only way they know how, and destroys itself in the process. My only dislike in the book is the glossing over of a few of the characters. We really only get a glimpse of the parents, their daughter, and one of their sons. The other two boys seem to be inconsequential and I wish Oates would have expounded further on their lives after their sister is raped. Overall, this was a wonderful book - definantly worth reading. Oates draws us in and then crushes us, never quite regaining our trust, leaving us as exposed as her characters.
Rating:
Summary: We Were the Mulvanys
Review: With any novel there are initial expectations, whether triggered by the authors' previous works, by the jacket comments, or perhaps by the fact that the book made Oprah's list. I approach each book with an open mind (I think) and tend to keep my expectations at a relatively modest level, hoping for, at worst, an interesting and entertaining story, and at best something insightful, thought provoking and possibly even beautiful. "We Were The Mulvaney's" easily surpassed my lowest expectations, however it did not achieve my highest. It does not disappoint, but neither does it excel. I enjoyed the story, and read it quickly. It's thought provoking, but probably not in the way intended by the author. Instead of pondering the depths and nuances of familial relationships in and out of crisis, I found myself continually asking, "is this plausible?" As a father of two teenagers, (one of each gender), I found the family relationships too idyllic and sometimes even wildly implausible. At times the characterizations cross the line from interestingly quirky to just plain goofy. I kept imagining how my kids would react, and what they would say, if my wife or I ever attempted dialogue such as this. Ultimately though, two actions occur that are, for me at least, totally incomprehensible: 1) the father's reaction to the story's central 'event', and 2) the mother's complicity in banishing the daughter from the scene. All of the other peripheral reactions - the anger, the desire for retribution, and of course the father's disappointment regarding the conduct of his 'peers' - are understandable. The shunning of their daughter is not. My next comment will no doubt brand me as a heretic, but I don't believe that one gender can write convincingly from the perspective of the other. Therefore, the story, narrated by the youngest Mulvaney son, was, for me, simply not convincing. The comments and observations, apt from a female perspective, were somewhat inappropriate from a male perspective. It's not a judgmental comment; we just view the world differently. Which brings me back to the rape. Except in rare and special circumstances, rape is something that happens to women, and I don't think men can ever totally grasp the physical and emotional trauma that occurs. Again, it's a different view. It's relatively easy to understand it from a societal perspective, but not from the personal. Therefore it is not, and probably can never be as devastating an event for the father as was portrayed in the book. But, since I'm way out on this limb anyway, I'll add that I suspect that 95%+ of Oprah's Book Club readers are women, so it's probably a moot point. The comments above notwithstanding, I did enjoy the book. One aspect of the story stood out far above everything else. This was the sense that our personal equilibrium, i.e. family relationships, friendships, and personal beliefs and values, is terribly fragile and subject to forces beyond our control. It is something difficult to achieve and easily lost, and I doubt most of us stop long enough to consider it even exists. Therefore, from whichever perspective you view your world - as a parent, child, spouse, sibling or friend - acknowledge the good in your life and cherish it as long as you can.
Rating:
Summary: Destiny is a matter of choice!!!
Review: The entire time I was reading this story, I felt disgusted by the choices the mulvanneys made. A person's or family's destiny is not a matter of chance but a matter of choice. Someone in this family should have made a conscious decision to end the madness and silence that was consuming their family. The mulvanneys allowed one single event define who they were. Their family history had been negated by that one act. The mulvanneys had become synomomous with rape. I pitied this family, who so desperatley did not want to be pitied. But they were pitiful. weren't they? Every member of that family, except Judd, who was too young at the time, could have stopped that family's plunge into despair. After the rape, I despised all of the Mulvanneys. Corrine, I dispised the most. As a mother and a wife, I never would have sent away my innocent child, to appease my weak husband. Corrine was a co-conspirator in the demise and disintergation of that family. By sending marianne away, she agreed that marianne was responsible for what happened to her, to their family. I do not possess a love for my husband, that will allow me to chose him over the rest of my family. Sending my wounded child away in order to placate another, would not sit right in my soul. Michael was weak and pathetic, as seen by his need to be accepted by others. Corrine was made weak by supporting him. That whole family could have made better choices and lived a whole other life. But they chose to succumb to the tragedy. By choosing to live a somewhat secluded and isolated life, the mulvanneys should have pulled together and supported each other. By not being allowed to give voice to their emotions, they failed as a family. How can they ever live decent lives again? I hope to forget this family. these are not people that I'd like to know. I do not want them running around in my psyche. The author could have told this story with less words and fewer details and the story still would have been just as effective.
Rating:
Summary: A sad tale of family crisis
Review: What a tragic story this was. . . not to say I didn't enjoy it, I did very much. I do wish though, that Ms Oates had enlightened us a bit more on what Mike Sr. was truly feeling, I would've enjoyed some of his internal dialogue to maybe give me a better idea on what he was feeling. For a father to completely shut down like that and refuse to see his daughter, I wanted to delve into his mind. I've read several books by this author and have tremendous respect & admiration for her talent. Here she explores family relations with a keen eye for the mundane trials and tribulations of family life. All in all I would recommend this book, it was an enjoyable read and the characters were well developed.
Rating: 
Summary: What a Snoozer!
Review: This book was so disappointing. Putting the shoddy grammatical and spelling errors aside, (did anyone proofread the text before it went to press?) the story is quite disappointing. The author describes things that we really have no need to know about - and does it at inappropriate times of the story. We don't care what color the ceiling was when Marianne was three. Give us a break! The ending is absolutely stupid. Never has so much been written about so little. Do yourself a favor and skip this Oprah book - you'll enjoy "House of Sand and Fog" or "Drowning Ruth" much more.
|
