We Were the Mulvaneys Free

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Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Ephraim, New York, We Were the Mulvaneys 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 We Were the Mulvaneys will slide, almost imperceptibly at first, from the pinnacle of happiness, transformed by the vagaries of fate into a scattered collection of l The Mulvaneys of High Point Farm in Mt. 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 We Were the Mulvaneys 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 We Were the Mulvaneys them, reuniting in the spirit of love and healing. Get A Copy. PaperbackOprah's Book Club editionpages. Published September 1st by Plume first published September More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about We Were the Mulvaneysplease sign up. This question contains spoilers… view spoiler [as amazing as this book is it did in fact leave me hanging! Joanne Katzman I got the sense that Marianne was always loving and forgiving. She found a kind, caring husband and I expect that she is going to be okay. She's very …more I got the sense that Marianne was always loving and forgiving. She's very nurturing to animals, We Were the Mulvaneys I would expect her to be nurturing to her children as well. This question contains spoilers… view spoiler [i want to know thw theme of the novel? Janet Rodriguez This answer contains spoilers… view spoiler [ The novel is a thinly-veiled retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear, the modern downfall of a family, the name forever tarnished because of the "king's" …more The novel is a thinly-veiled retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear, the modern downfall of a family, the name forever tarnished because of the "king's" bad decisions and pride. Oates adds her own flavor, having grown We Were the Mulvaneys in upstate New We Were the Mulvaneys, familiar with its political climate in the 's. See all 5 questions We Were the Mulvaneys We Were the Mulvaneys…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of We Were the Mulvaneys. May 02, Paul Bryant rated it liked it Shelves: novels. Six months after the death of Joyce Carol Oates a couple of her fans will visit her grave. Just underneath the keening mournful almost-Canadian wind as they stand by the graveside they will hear to their consternation a little tiptappy scratching noise. From underground. They will run run run to get the caretaker who will get the police who will get the bigger police. They'll all hear the sound. Tippytappy, scritchscratch. They'll hum and haw, and then they'll exhume the body. When they crack op Six months after the death of Joyce Carol Oates a couple of her fans will visit her grave. When they crack open the coffin next to JCO's earthly remains they'll find a neat page typescript of the new novel. It will be Joyce's 53rd. Oh, what's that you say? Her 54th - they found another one in the boot of a car she used to drive - and it's another masterpiece you say? Having said all that - is she any good? Well, alas for you authors who cough out one page novel every ten years, the answer is yes, sometimes, but "We Were the Mulvaneys" isn't the one to convince anybody - that would be "What I Lived For" which is a stone masterpiece. This whopping Mulvaney book promises much and for the first pages is compulsive, propulsive, and then like a toy balloon you blew up and tried to tie but your fingers fumbled and whoosshhhh it zaps away from you and spirals and biffs and thwaps into every wall and every corner of the room and finally peters out and dies into someone's cup of coffee, this novel just seems to get away from its author - she writes and writes and writes about the four Mulvaney kids and their two parents and in the end it was all very herkyjerky and exactly where JCO should have shone her fearless psychological searchlight was exactly where she appeared to shy away from - i. Now why would he do such a thing? And why would his good Christian-hearted wife put up with him doing such a thing, and actually go along with it and not see her daughter when it broke her heart? JCO loves to get into her character's heads and does so very well, but here - right here at the We Were the Mulvaneys spot of the whole book, the axis around which the fate of the family revolved, the point at which their ascent turns to descent - here is where she backs off, never an explanation of this central appalling cruelty. This may be very intentional but if so the intention was lost on me. And because of this, as I realised we were never going to explore this painful area, and that the novel, like its characters, was We Were the Mulvaneys to tippytoe away from it, I got mardy and disgruntled and I began not to care. When I got to the five page description of the final illness of Muffin the cat a cat, not a cool person with catlike powers my We Were the Mulvaneys of gruntle was turning into outright mockery. Five pages about this cat's kidney problems and no pages about why the father can't stand to look at his daughter after she's raped. I think Joyce lost the plot. Four stars for pages ish, We Were the Mulvaneys generous stars for pages ish to View all 90 comments. May 26, Glenn Sumi rated it really liked it. It takes We Were the Mulvaneys while for the book to find its way. So many character introductions! So many coy digressions! Do we really need to know about all the family nicknames and pets?! There are several biblical and mythical allusions; and much of the book has the inexorable feel of a Greek Tragedy. The idea of Darwinian evolution is also a big theme. And We Were the Mulvaneys book can also be read, quite convincingly, as one of those Death of the American Dream novels. When institutions fail people, you're left with the family unit. Not all We Were the Mulvaneys prose is so insightful. This passage, for instance, cries out for tightening and clarity: There were those times when the telephone rang, and she We Were the Mulvaneys not locate a phone amid the clutter. She rushed, she stumbled — for what if it was Michael Sr. I read that last run-on sentence four times before comprehending it. And in the same paragraph! And when one of the most wounded characters finds herself in a sanctuary view spoiler [for wounded animals who have been given a second chance at life hide spoiler ]the symbolism might seem obvious, but after pages it feels earned. A lesser writer would have offered up sentimentality, cheesy redemption monologues and copious tears. Oates is after something more complex, more textured, and ultimately more real. We might think we know who the Mulvaneys are, but they can, like humans everywhere, still surprise us. View all 29 comments. Apr 22, Perry rated it it was ok. Who doesn't desire his father's death? A first point would be that Oates could have shown what she wanted to show--the disintegration of a seemingly typical family--in three-hundred pages instead of four-hundred and fifty plus. Besides its verbosity, the chief problem I had with the novel was that Oates kept trying to make the point that th Who doesn't desire his father's death? Besides its verbosity, the chief problem We Were the Mulvaneys had with the novel was that Oates We Were the Mulvaneys trying to make the point that the family's downfall was not We Were the Mulvaneys to "any one person's fault. Yet, to assign no fault to the parents defies reason and truth when the father turned out to be a pathetic jackass for his absolute indifference or at least reckless cruelty to his daughter and the mother a complicit rag-a-muffin, recklessly indifferent to her baby girl. It was just too much for me to believe the dad's unexplained refusal to have anything to do with his daughter after the rape, and the mom's role in casting the daughter out into the We Were the Mulvaneys on dad's behalf, as if the rape was their daughter's fault. I didn't get any indication despite how much Oates seems to go on and on and on that the parents believed their daughter was not credible or that she was "asking for" the rape, no matter how illogical such We Were the Mulvaneys belief would be. Daddy Mulvaney is eaten up by resentment, and certainly that isn't unrealistic, as the reader watches him become a cancer to the world around him, including to his family. Most men cannot deal with problems that they cannot fix. And, a high school daughter cannot be "fixed" from the harm she has suffered from a rape. When Daddy realizes this, he is consumed with rage at the boy who raped her, at the boy's family, at the law, at the members of his country club, at everyone. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. Take a look at the title of this difficult story: We Were the Mulvaneys. The implication is that the trauma and tragedy of Marianne's attack drove the We Were the Mulvaneys apart. By saying, we were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates is suggesting that they are not a family anymore. In that way, the novel seems to be both about Marianne, and also her father. The novel explores the ways violence disturbs a community, showing that rape and other kinds of We Were the Mulvaneys against women are communal issues. The question on the table is why should Marianne's father be able to play the victim? For instance, he rejects his daughter out of his own frustration and confusion not to mention the trauma of finding out one of his business colleagues raised the kind of son who would rape an innocent child. Apparently, the attack was so disturbing in nature that just knowing about it drives the father crazy. When his We Were the Mulvaneys and dysfunction drive the family apart, the question is whether he has done Marianne justice, but the novelist is compelling. Any parent could explain why the father is affected so deeply. However, his failure is still to be regarded as a failure. By failing to allow his own daughter to grieve in her own way, he betrays her. She needs a stable support system, but instead he makes her into a loner and a vagrant. She has to deal We Were the Mulvaneys the trauma alone. This loneliness We Were the Mulvaneys not be the father's fault entirely, though. The most charitable interpretation of this novel would be that Marianne's loneliness is the consequence of her rape—not something to be blamed on the father. The father's hope is removed from him by the traumatic event, so instead of "blaming the victim," the reader should consider that perhaps the true effects of violence against women are communal. The father's mental instability represents the drastic nature of the event. We Were the Mulvaneys study guide contains a biography of Joyce Carol Oates, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. We Were the Mulvaneys essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. Remember me. Forgot your password? Study Guide for We Were the Mulvaneys We Were the Mulvaneys study guide contains a biography of We Were the Mulvaneys Carol Oates, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. We Were the Mulvaneys Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary

The Mulvaneys are blessed by all We Were the Mulvaneys makes life sweet. Profoundly cathartic, this extraordinary novel unfolds as if Oates, in plumbing the darkness of the human spirit, has come upon a source of light at its core. Moving away from the dark tone of her more recent masterpieces, Joyce Carol Oates turns the tale of We Were the Mulvaneys 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. Joyce Carol Oates' "We Were the Mulvaneys" follows the fallout in the lives of the Mulvaney family of upstate New York as the result of one fateful night. February 14, the Mulvaney's We Were the Mulvaneys daughter, Marianne, attends the prom at the local high school and high on her popularity makes a mistake and ends up being raped. Marianne's unwillingness to face her accuser in court ultimately rips the family apart--alienating the three Mulvaney sons, disolving the parent's marriage, all as Marianne struggles to find an identity for herself as the exiled fallen hero of the family. The novel follows the family for 20 years-- and leaves the reader wondering throughout--will they be the Mulvaneys again? This is an excellent and powerful work from Oates. The story is told primarily from the perspective of three of the children--Judd, Patrick, and Marianne--although Judd is introduced as the primary storyteller at the outset of the novel and both of the parents, Mike and Corinne, have their own chapters. The emotion in this novel is raw--the event damages each of the Mulvaneys in their own way, and no one of them will ever be the same. Their struggles against the ghosts of their past are not easy, but the journey is an emotional one that Oates shares intimately with the reader. This is an excellent book if you are interested in a rich character study. A wonderful lyrical storyteller, Oates makes parts of this novel sing with rich language and settings. If you enjoy literary fiction, this is a book for you. We were the Mulvaneys is about a family living in the Chatauqua Valley of New York state and the events that led to the unravelling of that family. The story opens with a first person narrator, Judd, the youngest son of the family, telling the story of how his family used to be a very prominent family in the area near Mt. Ephraim, New York, before an incident in would lead to a chain of events that would slowly tear the family apart. While I mentioned that Judd was the narrator, that isn't quite right. Sometimes the narrator is Judd, and sometimes it seems to be a third person omniscient narrator. Is that just Judd filling in what he surmises happened? That isn't quite clear. There are about pages where Judd isn't mentioned as the narrator at all. Then, all of a sudden, he begins talking at the beginning of a chapter. It felt like Oates forgot that Judd was supposed to be narrating and then suddenly remembered him. However, the alternating between Judd and an omniscient narrator worked much better in the fourth quarter of the book, which leaves me wondering if it was intentional. Maybe it was unintentional at first, and then she decided to just go with it. Either way, it is jolting when Judd reappears in the middle of the book after having been gone for so long. Another jolting issue with the We Were the Mulvaneys is the presence of anachronisms. For one, the family has a cat named E. The film E. Also, there are teenagers in named Austen and Zachary. Both of these names were very popular baby names in the s when the book was written, but they would not have been names commonly used around when these characters would have been born. Anachronistic names can jolt a reader out of the time and place of a story's narrative and make the book less effective. This is another thing that got better towards the end of the book, where I didn't notice anymore anachronisms. One thing that really struck me about this book was the level of detail that Joyce writes with. That is something that can get on my nerves if a writer slathers layers of detail onto a story with no sense We Were the Mulvaneys purpose, which I thought Joyce was doing early in the book. However, as I continued to read, I realized that she was painting a picture that enabled me to get inside of the heads of her characters because I now knew every angle of their lives and the impact everything had on them. This level of detail had become a strength by the end of the We Were the Mulvaneys, and I realized that it was necessary and intentional to tell the story. By the end, I thought this was a very good but very inconsistently frustrating book that was plagued by a muddled middle despite a good start and a very good finish. I was left wondering if Oates felt pressured to publish quickly and didn't have time to clean the middle up as much as she could have. We Were the Mulvaneys ending, however, was great, and would have been even better without the epilogue that, while good, We Were the Mulvaneys really a necessary addition to the story. The story ended well without it. Set in Southwest NY state, the family is blessed by a hardworking father who owns a roofing company, stay at home Mom and 4 beautiful children. Until the night of the prom when Marianne is raped by a local rich boy, and the entire family implodes, collataral victims of We Were the Mulvaneys tragedy. Marianne declines to press changes - since We Were the Mulvaneys was drunk, she feels it's her fault. Dad feels so guilty that Mom sides with him and sends MArianne away to live We Were the Mulvaneys distant cousins, which makes Marianne feel abandoned. Still Dad obsesses with the townsfolk, consulting lawyers and drinking heavily. The kids drift away, yet the mother still tries to hold on to Dad and save him, at the expense of maintaining ties with her kids. I think the book could have ended one chapter earlier, skipping the loving family reunion at the end. It was a hard read though, not only because of the story but also cause the style of writing I guess? At one time We Were the Mulvaneys thought shall I We Were the Mulvaneys, but the story was so intriguing, i wanted to know what happened. I am glad i did. I have cried my eyes out 2 nights in a row. Family torn apart by tragedy. Death of a father brings opportunity for the family to come together and heal old wounds. Can provide an interesting discussion on revenge, strength and weakness of families for book clubs. Easy to see why this became an Oprah pick. Here at Walmart. Your email address will never be sold or distributed to a third party for any reason. Sorry, but we can't respond to individual comments. If you need immediate assistance, please contact Customer We Were the Mulvaneys. Your feedback helps us make Walmart shopping better for We Were the Mulvaneys of customers. Recent searches Clear All. Enter Location. Update location. Learn more. Report incorrect product information. Joyce Carol Oates. Book Format. Select Option. Current selection is: eBook. Digital delivery to your. Walmart ebooks app. Sold by Penguin Publishing Group. About This Item. We aim to show you accurate product information. Manufacturers, suppliers and others provide what you see here, and we have not verified it. See our disclaimer. Write a review See all reviews Write a review. Most helpful positive review. Average Rating: 4. See more. Most helpful negative review. Average Rating: 2. Really Early Bird comment: I really strongly dislike the current narration style. Basic Summary: "Perfect", popular, loveable Mulvaney family is adored by their town. Until, their only daughter is date raped on prom night and the town turns on them. Only it's much snootier and more boring than it sounds. All the kids go off and implode into messes, the Father becomes a drunk not a spoiler! I wouldn't call the book predictable but I wouldn't call it riveting. There were dashes of 1st, We Were the Mulvaneys and 3rd We Were the Mulvaneys narrative. Like someone dumped the storytelling into a blender and spit it back out. Despite the first chapter making it clear that the entire story is supposed to be narrated by the "journalist" youngest son. That being said, I know why it was recommended to me and the writing was pretty darn good and I may need to check into a different Joyce Carol Oates novel to test it out. Final note: They describe the mother as a "graying redhead", which everyone knows is a rarity! Us natural redheads don't gray, we blonde! Quotes:1 "But I believe in uttering the truth, even if it hurts. Particularly if it huts". Frequent mentions.