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We Were the Mulvaneys (A William Abrahams Book)
Although I haven't read Oates for years i was an ardent fan at one point in my life. "We were the Mulvaney's" was a huge disappointment. Oates still shows her amazing descriptive skills,but I did not believe one character in this book.I did not believe that the parents presented the way they were in the beginning of the book would ever have reacted to the plight of their beloved daughter in that way...especially the mother. Oates does not prove her point that lovable quirky people can turn into clueless monsters in the face of trauma. Thumbs down!
We Were the Mulvaneys (A William Abrahams Book)
This story was soooooooo long that about 3/4 of the way through I was thinking "enough already" ~~~ I enjoyed the picturesque farm country and the image of "small town life" BUT all I can say is: how times have changed!! I can't believe the lack of emotional support given to the rape victim (the Mulvaney daughter) in this book. It was hard for me to imagine parents, especially the mother, feeling the "shame" for themselves and doing absolutely nothing to help their daughter. Although, the book semi held my interest and I did finish it, it was pretty slow going at times.. I closed the book and said "so long" !!
We Were the Mulvaneys (A William Abrahams Book)
This book was a real chore to plow through for me. What could have been a good story was marred by a jumbled plot and unsympathetic characters. In the end I was relieved to finish this and move on to greener pastures.The plot at its simplest is similar to "The Lovely Bones" or "She's Come Undone"--at least the latter was also and Oprah book--where a girl is raped and the family goes all to pieces in the aftermath. In this case darling cheerleader and chaste Christian Marianne is raped after the prom in 1976. Until that time the Mulvaneys were a respected family. The father Michael Sr. owned a successful roofing company. The mother Corinne was active in the community and churches. The oldest son Michael Sr. was a star athlete and the other son Patrick on his way to becoming valedictorian. This all changes after the rape. In the community the Mulvaneys become pariahs. Michael Sr. becomes a raging alcoholic and loses his business. Michael Jr. joins the Marines. Patrick takes vengeance on his sister's rapist and then disappears to live off the grid. And Marianne is bundled off to live with a cousin before joining a hippie commune. And from there things get worse until they get better.The first 100 pages or so reads like "The Waltons" written in the style of "The Shipping News" with lots of run-on sentences and fragments. Oates dances around the rape for a long time, well after anyone with an iota of intelligence has figured out what's happened. Especially annoying to me was when Marianne finally tells her mother, instead of getting to the aftermath of this we're hauled back for a flashback 24 years earlier of how Michael and Corinne got together. That's worse than those soap opera cliffhangers that make you wait 3 days (or longer) to find out who shot someone.The biggest problem with the book then is after the rape. Everything from then out is told in jumbled snippets. Most of the growing and maturing the Mulvaney children do as they scatter from the nest is done outside the book so that we see only glimpses of it. It is essentially like looking at a family photo album where you see a picture of someone at 10 then 16 then 18 then 24 but you don't really know what happened between all those snapshots. Perhaps that was the author's intention, but it takes away from having a cohesive narrative.It's amazing when you go back and think about it how absent the Mulvaney children are from much of the book. Michael Jr. goes off to the Marines and is almost never heard from again until the end. After Patrick takes his vengeance he too disappears with at least a third of book left. The youngest son (and narrator) Judd was barely present to start with. Marianne gets a couple extended parts towards the end and I wish she didn't because she was so danged precious, as innocent as a small child even at the age of 29; that got on my nerves.There was no one in the book I was rooting for because I didn't like any of them. Michael Jr. and Judd are exempt because they were all but invisible so there was nothing to like. Patrick was an obnoxious know-it-all, sort of the Lisa Simpson or Stewie Griffin of the Mulvaney clan. I already went into Marianne. Michael Sr. was just a mean drunk (can you ever like someone who exiles his own daughter for being raped) and Corinne was such a spineless, overzealous doormat.The author had this annoying habit too of overusing some expressions. Especially Marianne "plucking" her hair. It's amazing she had any left by the end. In the epilogue, Corinne mica-shimmering silver hair was referenced three times at least in case you were too dense to figure it out the first time. This is the kind of stuff that annoys me because I'm a very analytical reader, but I doubt most people would care.Were there good things about the book? Sure. The descriptions that weren't overused were good. The characters mostly had different, albeit irritating, personalities. So it's got that going for it.Bottom line is if you're a fan of Oprah books like the two I mentioned earlier then this is probably right up your alley. It's not for me.That is all.
We Were the Mulvaneys (A William Abrahams Book)
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 bluewhen 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.
We Were the Mulvaneys (A William Abrahams Book)
I too finally made it through the book. I kept waiting for a point to it, but never found one. I could not believe that any parents would treat their daughter the way Marianne was treated. It was painful to read right up until the last page. P.S. I like almost all of Oprah's picks, but NOT this one!
We Were the Mulvaneys (A William Abrahams Book)
I tried to like this book, I really did, but no matter how positive my attitude was at the beginning, the book just fell far short of my expectations. To begin with, Joyce Carol Oates is not one of my favourite authors. I respect her ability, but her writing style is simply not one I care for. There is just an in-depth quality of suspense lacking in her writing. However, having heard and read so much publicity on this book, it appeared the book might be worth reading.To the author's credit, the concept of the story and the family characters were excellent. However, the family is typically a traditional family, and in this day and age with so many divorces and blended families, the traditional family is almost the non-traditional. Anyone who has not been part of a close-knit family might find it difficult to relate to the characters and how they intermingled with each other. Much of the book revolves around a sexual assault and the inter-relationship of family members throughout the book. In my opinion the book is just too "wishy-washy" and leaves much to speculation and many questions unanswered. While the concept of the story was based on a good idea, the writing style simply did not hold my attention; the story and writing style became tedious and long-winded. For all its rave reviews, the book was a disappointment.