Review: We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

Title: We Were the Mulvaneys

Author: Joyce Carol Oates

Genre: Realistic-fiction (Adult)

Pages: 454 (Paperback)
Publisher: Plume

Publication date: September 1st, 1997

Synopsis from We Were the Mulvaneys Goodreads page


Moving away from the dark tone of her more recent masterpieces, Joyce Carol Oates turns the tale of a family struggling to cope with its fall from grace into a deeply moving and unforgettable account of the vigor of hope and the power of love to prevail over suffering. The Mulvaneys of High Point Farm in Mt. Ephraim, New York, are a large and fortunate clan, blessed with good looks, abundant charisma, and boundless promise. But over the twenty-five year span of this ambitious novel, the Mulvaneys will slide, almost imperceptibly at first, from the pinnacle of happiness, transformed by the vagaries of fate into a scattered collection of lost and lonely souls.It is the youngest son, Judd, now an adult, who attempts to piece together the fragments of the Mulvaneys' former glory, seeking to uncover and understand the secret violation that occasioned the family's tragic downfall. Each of the Mulvaneys endures some form of exile- physical or spiritual - but in the end they find a way to bridge the chasms that have opened up among them, reuniting in the spirit of love and healing.


I'm going to start with finding this book. I had never read anything by Joyce Carol Oates, and I had honestly never even heard of her before. I was given a list of books for English class, and I needed to pick one of those books to read, and then I would need to write an essay on it. All of the books looked really good, but people picked books fast and there was only a few left that I could choose from, so I went with this one. I'm happy to say that I absolutely loved this book.
The beginning of the book was a little difficult to get into, as the first 80 or so pages are just introducing the main characters and describing the setting, which was a LOT. It took me a month to read just the first 100 pages, which is kind of crazy for me.
After that first 100 pages though, the book just flew by. The plot began to pick up, and although there isn't that much happening during the book major-plot wise, it takes place over decades so that there is a lot more to read about.
I feel that it is a very important book to read, as it deals with a very important topic. The main female character is raped early on in the book, and the rest of the book is about how she and her family deal with this tragedy. She was the perfect child, and she turned into the most-hated person by many of the people in the story.
The characters, although there were so many I lost count, were all extremely well developed. They all had a very different back story that it went into detail about, and every single one of their actions in the novel made sense with what they had been through. They all had different childhoods and their own voice, which is very difficult to do with so many of them. They had their similarities, but they also had massive differences, which was wonderful because it lets the reader connect them to other characters while not judging them or loving/hating them for what those other characters had done in the past.
The plot of the story was also very well done, because although it is essentially just about what happens to this family, it also covers many other aspects of family life such as abuse, faith, strength, loss, and love.
The story is written so descriptively, that it feels that you are actually there, and that you actually know these characters. As the reader, the story moves back and forth between time frames and perspectives, which can be confusing in some novels but I feel was done amazingly well in this novel.
Overall - ★★★★★