Rating: 
Summary: Unsatisfying Sham Lacking Truth
Review: I just finished reading this book, sticking with it out of a desperate hope that there would be some kind of backbone in at least one of the characters to speak some truth. The trauma that this family goes through is compounded by selfishness and stupidity, blind faith in the flawed characters around them. Any self-aware person will come away from this book thinking, "Could real people ever be this blind? This silent?" The trauma that the family endures certainly was met with silence throughout history, but the family's reaction - banishing an innocent daughter, the daughter meekly submitting to this banishment, everyone's (except one son's) acceptance of this complicity - sickened me. Perhaps the point of the author was to make us wonder at this complicity, but no true answers were offered. This lack of confrontation or apology, whether an example to react against or an attempt at creating a "realistic" portrait of a befuddled family, leaves me supremely unsatisfied. The narrator himself is complicit in the ostracising of his sister, seems to condemn it, yet never creates closure or offers an apology to his sister. The final vision of the book, of the survivors of the family coming together in a loving exchange, is patently unreal. The capacity to forgive is an incredible human trait, but these characters have also fogotten deep traumas that cannot simply be solved by the passing of the father. It was the mother, after all, who arranged the logistics of sending their daughter away. Where is the truth in this sham? Nowhere. Don't waste your money. If you are seeking a delicate portrait of identity and forgiveness, read "Remains of the Day".
Rating: 
Summary: Little Bit of story in a Whole Lot of Words
Review: This plot is one I would normally go for; high school girl raped, town and family in denial, family falls apart. Sounds good enough, but you are going to need a lot of time on your hands to get through that plot. I trudged ( and even skimmed)parts of this book. It started with a bang, I was in and feeling the charcters also, but it seems to plataue and even fall flat here and there. I was disappointed especially to see the mother, who seems to really come across as a determined women, crumple and disolve under her husband's misery. I kept waiting for something big to happen ~ revenge, scorching pain, new found triumph ~ANYTHING and it just never did. It is not a total disappointment, Joyce Carol Oates has talent, but I think this same story could be retold, minus 150 pages or so, and be much more enjoyable. If you are a fan of the author, or maybe have a special interest in the subject matter, this book will be more enjoyable. For avid readers who like a well written story to fall into (like myself) it didn't quite hit the mark.
Rating: 
Summary: A Family Saga of Epic Dimensions
Review: This is a tremendously satisfying novel, in which Joyce Carol Oates goes about as deeply as a novelist can possibly go into the hearts and minds of her characters. In the process, she illustrates the terrible cost familiy loves and loyalties can exact on its members. We Were the Mulvaneys manages to be both terribly sad and strangely uplifting, without ever lapsing into melodrama. It documents the disintegration of an ostensibly invulnerable, loving, and happy American family in the wake of the date rape of the Mulvaney daughter, Marianne, on Valentine's Day, 1976. The effects of this incident resonate for decades after, and Oates is unsparing in exposing the extremes of love and cruelty that can exist within both the family unit and society as a whole when unwritten taboos are breached. And of course, palpably present is Oates's fixation with the specter of evil and violence that, for her, always lurks just below the gleaming surfaces of American life. Yet Oates does not restrict herself to writing a King Lear-like family tragedy, because We Were the Mulvaneys is also a testament to the ability of men and women to somehow survive and rebuild their lives, often in the face of terrible emotional betrayal and neglect.
The novel is mostly narrated by the youngest child, Judd Mulvaney, who communicates the vitality and contentment of the Mulvaney family in the years before "it" (as the rape is constantly referred to by family and community members) happened. The Mulvaney patriarch has a successful roofing business in a small town in Upstate New York, and the family lives in a beautiful old home on a small farm eight miles out of town. Family life on the farm is portrayed as happily chaotic, nurturing, and full of an assortment of reassuring rituals that affirm the Mulvaney's fundamental togetherness. All in all the reader is left in no doubt as to the strength of the Mulvaney family's love for and loyalty toward each other. Yet when "it" happens, we see the fragility of the structure that undergirds family happiness and a family's standing in a small town community. Suddenly we see the enormous pride of the Mulvaney patriarch, and how that pride turns to shame and a terribly destructive anger once he and the family begin to be subtly ostracized by former friends and acquaintances. It is at the point where family members become irreversibly alienated from each other and are thrown on their own resources that the novel truly begins, and it's a remarkable journey. Despite the fact that this is a quite large novel, Oates's grip on her narrative never falters, and she manages to lay bare the emotional scars and hopes of all six Mulvaneys as she takes them (and us) through the late seventies, the eighties, and the early nineties--twenty-five years in all. Oates obviously set very high standards for herself when she wrote We Were the Mulvaneys, and if you make it through this novel, you'll probably feel like I did--that she succeeded brilliantly.
Rating: 
Summary: An indepth look into family ties...
Review: I really enjoyed this book. After reading Blonde, also by Joyce Carol Oates, I had expected this book to be like Blonde--racier, more risque I suppose. However, We Were the Mulvaneys was more of a family saga that really dove into what made the members of the Mulvaney family tick. What had appeared to be a perfect family was not strong enough to withstand the rape of Marianne, which leads us to discover all the things that really go on inside the heads of the Mulvaneys. An enjoyable read that you don't have to think too hard for, but a lot above cheap romance novels!
Rating:
Summary: A talented writer with a weak story
Review: Joyce Carol Oates is a very talented writer and has a knack for description; however, she tends to get too wordy and descriptive at times. Sometimes I appeciated being able to see the characters' world clearly through their eyes--other times I grew impatient to get to the point.
The story itself was not all that great. The Mulvaneys were so unbelievably loving and perfect, it was implausible that Marianne's "assault" would be the thing that made such a loving family fall apart. That may have been more believable had there been problems already existing in the family, not to mention making the family seem more normal and less irritating. I got a little tired of reading all the "perfect family" cliches (religion, apple pie, cheerleaders and football players,) the tireless descriptions of each and every dog, cat, horse, and so on.
Marianne could have been a much stronger character. She wore on my nerves with her simpleminded everlasting goodness, always behaving like a child and always accepting whatever treatment came her way. At some point I expected her to change, but she never did. How could she never once feel angry or question the way her family treated her? Corinne was another weak and accepting female character, Mike Sr. came off as an oaf, and I felt no sympathy for him. How could I, for someone who's main concern is what his friends at the country club will think? Patrick and Judd and the dynamics between them and their personalities was probably the most interesting part of the story. Mike Jr. could have been left out altogether.
I also found the ending to be highly unbelievable...after so many years of dysfunction, everything is forgiven and they all live happily ever after.
I think I could enjoy Joyce Carol Oates' writing, but next time with a better story and more interesting and human characters.
Rating:
Summary: There are no real villians at home, only poor choices.
Review: How does th perfect family fall apart at the seams? Th Mulvaney's seemed like a blessed family living in the garden of Eden, complete with a Noah's Ark of animals. But calamity strikes, society tunrs up its nose, Dad falls apart and Mom seems to make the wrong decision sending verberaions through the family that seem never to end. Can this family be saved?
Rating:
Summary: Realistic Reality
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is heart wrenching and intriguing. It is like being in the Mulvaney family and seeing things that are hidden to the outside world. This is a family struggling to get through the bad and trying to make good out of what they have. Oates does a fantastic job of looking at the family through Judd's as well as the rest of the family members eyes. There is a lot of description sometimes which can be a bit of a slowdown, but once you are into the book you are hooked. I wanted to find out how everything was going to turn out. It shows that no matter what the power of love and family ties really can hold people together even when the last sliver of hope seems to have dissapeared. I definitely recommend this book to anyone. Fantastic!
Rating:
Summary: Good and Bad
Review: The book carried on and you weren't quite sure where it was going. However, as it approached its story of the moment, it was quite interesting. Though it took awhile to read, it was worth it. I cried when it ended.
Rating:
Summary: Unredeeming in all aspects
Review: I've never said I hated a book before I read this one. It was dark, the characters stumbled through horrible lives and everything always got worse. I felt exhausted and black, and blue
when I finally dug my way through this turgid book. I usually give books to friends for a reread and this is the only time a threw a book in the recycle bin.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This book crawled along at a snail's pace. I kept waiting for it to pick up steam, but it never did.
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