We Were the Mulvaneys

Mulvaneys deserves more attention and prominence in Oates' oeuvre. It didn't receive a National Book Award (like here 1969 work, them) or a Pulitzer nomination (like Black Water, What I Lived For, and Blonde). It's notoriety came from selection by the Oprah book club and a movie adaptation.

But Mulvaneys is excellent! Oates crafts perceptibly realistic characters, who are as emotionally complicated and psychologically baffling as any real human being. The novel also interestingly forays into religious and epistemological issues; in fact, Oates depicts the religious Maryanne heroically, though she cannot defend her faith against her brother's deep-seeded naturalism.

Oates impinges stirring literary conceits upon this simple story, which she admits is indebted to Shakespeare’s King Lear. The narration, generally linear, features vivid flashbacks. The structure works compellingly well, as the flashbacks provide foil for the proceedings of the novel.

The narration is quite good with one exception. Shina often hints at a rural Southern accent, but the work is set in rural upstate New York. This was distracting through the first third of the audiobook.

Otherwise, it's a great listen!

Twenty-two hours of nothing. This is a story of a superficial family, growing up in a small town and constantly worrying about appearances. Mrs. Mulvaney was moving about with her head in the clouds. She seemed more concerned about the farm animals than she was about her husband and children. She chose to hide behind her faith in God with the expectation that her family would take care of themselves. Not having parents to guide her, the daughter was left floundering and on her own. The father was no better with parenting skills. He focused on having a successful business and living a superficial life, even to the point of joining a country club where he was only tolerated. One act of violence, eventually forced this family to realize that they had no foundation to keep them strong.

With all due respect to the difficulty of narration, and while Mr. Shins is clearly a professional, the performance completely misses the voice of place critical to this story. He should have been coached to speak the dialog closer to a Central New York accent and speech pattern. Too often rural voices are spoken in a totally generic southern drawl. I can assure you this voice would be completely foreign in the Chautaqua Valley, where speech is much flatter, closer to French Canadian. I couldn't take it and decided to read the book instead. If you're not as familiar with CNY, or not as picky, it may not bother you at all. The story is very true in spirit to the place and time, as Oates understands this community in her bones.

I read this before, maybe 10 years ago, but forgot what a powerful story it is. So glad to have listened to it!

It's a good thing all audiobooks aren't as good as "We Were the Mulvaney's" -- nobody would get anything done. We'd just sit and listen. I normally stay away from Oprah books, but this one is magnificent, pure Americana. Absolutely excellent.

I admit to having read this book at least three times, but this was my first (although certainly not my last) listen. I was a little hesitant, not wanting a less-than-stellar narration to 'ruin' it for me, but that certainly was not the case. Scott Shina does an admirable job, getting all the family members just right. Not easy -- capturing the slightly ditsy Corrine, so she doesn't sound like a maniac, but clearly as someone with a few 'issues'. Or Patrick, with his high intelligence, who needs to come off as someone who loves to know everything, but not as superior or arrogant. Even the eccentric and crusty Whittaker West, who came across exactly right, as a mensch underneath it all.

It's a sad book, in so many ways. In the beginning, when everything is perfect in a big-family 'Sunnybrook Farm' sort of way, I find myself thinking that I'd be happy if the book just went on like this forever. But of course it doesn't. 'Something' happens to Marianne, and that changes not only the family dynamic forever, but ultimately results in ... well, read it and find out. I wouldn't spoil anyone's pleasure for a moment.

I will say this: If you loved the book, you may want to skip the over-long author interview at the end. Usually I love those interviews -- the ones Nelson DeMille does, with many of his books, are wonderful and add so much to the book. Not this one. The fact that Oates tries to justify Michael, the father's, actions makes my skin crawl. I also fail to see the heroism she attributes to Marianne -- that wasn't saintliness, in my mind. It was insanity. We do agree on this, though: the animals -- all of them -- were characters all by themselves in this book. If I had a nickel for every tear I've shed over Muffin, I could retire.

Whatever, it's a masterpiece. Just clear your calendar for 22 hours. It's worth it.

Aside from the middlebrow writing of Oates, the narrator is completely irritating. The Mulvaneys live in upstate New York and always have. But whenever the narrator "does" either the mother's or the father's voices, he uses a down-home Texas accent. Mrs. Mulvaney sounds like Sissy Spacek. It is so irritating I could not go on.

Joyce Carol Oates is a brilliant writer, and this book doesn't disappoint. But the narrator is juvenile, inept, and a bit patronizing in his reading, to the point where I frankly can't imagine getting through the audio. The story of this family might be engrossing and heartbreaking to many listeners; I am resentful on the author's behalf that this twit's rendition of it may drive them away.

Her "A Widow's Story," on the other hand, was exquisitely read.

You get to know the characters very well, emotions are brought to the surface. It will make you cry & laugh!

It seems to me that Joyce Carol 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 the family's downfall was not due to "any one person's fault." It was no doubt set in motion by the date rape of the daughter by a guy who attended high school with her and one of her three brothers. 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 world 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 a 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.

Mom is Daddy's hick flop who shows no reservations or guilt or shame about the treatment of her daughter.

Last, I found it nearly absurd that a mother would treat household pets and farm animals better and as more important than her own children.

There are simply too many unexplained oddities for the novel to feel true to me.

I hate to say that this novel could lead one to agree with Dostoevsky's rhetorical.

Don't delay! Download this book right away. I kept passing over this book for one reason or another, and finally decided to use a credit and listen. I wish I had done it sooner. This is added to my all time favorites list.

Excellent narration.
Touching story.