Sometimes, when reviewing a book, it's easier to explain the experience you had while reading it - so that's what I'm going to do with "We Were the Mulvaneys". This is a family saga that spans over several years. At first, the dense language made me feel like there was a ditch between me and the story. I had to get used to the prose, and I did so surprisingly fast; however, I still noticed the dense language every time I picked up the book, and if I was tired and just wanted to read to relax, I

First an admission of how I read this book. I happened to find it in a thrift store for 99 cents, and I read it daily on my bus trip to and from work. Reading it daily, but only a few pages at a time may or may not have colored the way I view it.If you are looking for a quick read, full of action, plot and intrigue, this is not the book for you. But if you are looking for a writer at the top of her game, taking the time to set her story in intricate, though necessary, settings of place, plot, ch...

I was just nearly through writing a review of this, and Goodreads crashed and I lost it! We Were a Review of We Were the Mulvaneys. :-(

By the end of this book I was crying. I just want to start with that and get it cleared out of the way. It wasn't just a sniff and the threat of tears, I had actual tears running down my face and snot streaming out of my nose. I was leaking enough that I actually had to put the book down and go grab some tissues.This book is very emotional, not just with how it makes the reader feel, but with how it's written. There was something unique about Oates writing that reflected a purely emotional conne...

I really needed Joyce Carol Oates to give me a break on this one. I was still reeling from the horrible experience I had of accidentally reading part of "Zombie" but I was prepared to try to forgive her. But even though no one in this book gave anyone else an ice-pick lobotomy, it was entirely devoid of any heart, hope, or mercy. I just don't need this in my life - there's nothing about this book stylistically that elevates it above its oppressively miserable story.

Confession. I have a peculiar interest in stories that most people consider depressing. I like to observe how people fail. I enjoy watching an author destroy families. Poor decisions, personal flaws, bad luck, awful timing--I don't care what causes it, just as long as the characters unravel, sucking faster clockwise down the toilet. Let me be clear: in real life I don't wish bad things to happen. But, there's a lot of human suffering in the world, and I find that subject more interesting than fi...

This book made me furious. I'm temporarily living in Princeton, and I told my housemate I'd like to track down JCO and throw it on her lawn.After 400 pages of unremitting misery, suddenly everything turns sunny again and there's a happy ending. Jeez...I think the term for this is "deus ex machina." The "machina(s)" ("machinae") for these five main characters were:1. bidding on items at auctions2. a motorcyle3. a drunk's last request4. unclear5. the Marine CorpsThe Chicago Tribune characterized t...

This is the first novel I have read my Joyce Carol Oates. She has many, and the fact that I didn't like this one won't stop me from reading others. I honestly feel like I wasted days on this book. Just simply wasted precious time. Here you have a loving couple with 3 boys and 1 girl. The girl gets raped. The father is so anguished by it that he has her sent away for years and years. The mother actually agrees to this (as a mother myself, I can't fathom this thought, especially if my child had do...

4 Reasons "We Were the Mulvaneys" was one true deep disappointment:1) I had already given J.C.O.s my full endorsement after reading "Zombie", a speedier version of "American Psycho" and "The Tattooed Girl", also a speedy version, this time of something long and droll by the likes of Roth. This is a sad disaster. I take everything I said about her back & now I realize why some people stopped being fans altogether.2) Speaking of speed- this "family saga", which is more like some episode in a lame,...

One thing for sure – Oates can write. Her Twitter antics might convince you she is not a serious writer, but she is. We Were The Mulvaneys is a juicy novel with quite a selection of antiheroes that creep up on you slowly, and you’re not sure when exactly you started hating them.The Mulvaneys are the golden family which gets undone by their own misogyny, bigotry and weakness of character. The biggest asshat, of course, is the father, who believes that the offense done to his daughter was done to

Warning! Warning! Potential spoilers contained in this rant-filled review!We Were the Mulvaneys is probably JCO’s most known novel. I can’t for the life of me understand why. I will be the first to tell you what a JCO enthusiast I am, yet before reading this I had never read a single novel of hers. I had read and loved her short stories as if they were written for my eyes only and I cherished them as such. I still do…more so now after having read this book.This book is….something.I guess a lot c...

The Mulvaneys: Gold Medal Winners for Bad Parenting I've read reviews by those who think this book is "what happens when a horrible event poisons a happy family" or something similar to that. Uh uh. Not quite. This book is all that, PLUS two ferociously bad parents, who stick to their ferociously bad parenting, and learn nothing, all through their journey.(Forgive me if this review sounds catty, I'm still kinda pissed off.)The Mulvaneys start off well. Michael Sr is so good looking his vivaci

Who doesn't desire his father's death? Fyodor Dostoevsky<<2.5 stars>>I want to write a few words about this novel while it's fresh on my mind instead of moving it to the back of my review line. 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

It's the way families are, sometimes. A thing goes wrong and no-one knows how to fix it and years pass and - no-one knows how to fix it. ** Spoilers below **So, I've seen reviews which don't like this book because the parents don't act the way readers want, or expect them to: but y'know, that's precisely why I like JCO - she doesn't pander to society's myths about what idealised maternity or paternity should look like. As much as we might want our parents to be all-knowing and all-loving, the

This is a story of how one terrible incident poisons and disintegrates a 'perfect' family.The Mulvaneys live on a farm in New York - there is Mum, Dad, Mike (eldest son), Patrick, Marianne, Judd (youngest son) and a myriad of animals.The story is told by Judd (he is now a journalist) over 25 years but it is not his personal story - more an exploration of each of the members of his family. Be warned - this is not an easy read!The subject matter is emotionally antagonistic and it is PAINFULLY slow...