4.5
Būtų 5, jei vietom mano skoniui nebūtų per daug žodžių. Bet labai patiko!

https://knyguziurkes.com/2024/04/04/m...

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 fiction with an inspirational tone or an uplifting message. I must have morbid chromosomal base pairs that make me intrigued with hidden, lurid details about a character's devolution to the bottom.

I've experienced a rather peaceful, profitable, humble, healthy, nuclear life. My stock has had a slow but interminable rise through 40 years, with the normal distressing whipsaws that are naturally smoothed over time. I've not had a sustained depression or streak of bad luck that was ever intractable. I've never been addicted, obsessed, exploited, abused, or criminal. I've never had a malignancy. Perhaps it's from this 'normal' life I like to experience vicariously the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.' I don't read these depressing novels with any air of conceit or swagger. I just want to know how life could otherwise be.

And yet, that doesn't explain my peculiar interest. There's something more. There's something more engaging about a tragic story than a hopeful one; something that demands attention. Something that makes you stare more intensely at a street riot than a street party; an old man crying than an old man laughing; scandal than good news; self-destruction than self-improvement. This also explains my attraction to the Realists and Naturalists, writers like Theodore Dreiser, John Steinbeck, Frank Norris, William Dean Howells, and the absolute genius of Emile Zola. These authors grind their characters into chaff and seed. Zola abuses, lacerates, addicts, crushes, masticates, and annihilates his characters; he brings hellfire. Joyce Carol Oates gets in the vicinity of that fire.

We Were the Mulvaneys is a book that moves over the unwinding and dissolution of a family like a discriminating hand over braille. Joyce Carol Oates introduces a 6 member family at their peak. Maybe even she introduces them past their zenith and onto the shallow downwind slope of the bell curve. Perhaps the Mulvaneys have never been better than 10-15 pages before the start of the book. That halcyon moment, unwritten, scintillating, which existed just before you started reading. The family tears itself apart over the next 430 pages. Oates orchestrates this family tragedy from a single, brutal incident. She captures the realism of how this incident reverberates to the rest of the family. There's a natural rhythm and a wholly believable anastomosis of decisions that are set forth, irrevocably patterned before each family member. They all make the worst decisions, the most defeating choices.

If you don't like chapter after chapter of hate, fear, guilt, anger, impotence, rot, and self-immolation, then you will score this book lower than 3 stars. If you're like me, and want to snoop on these human conditions, you'll have to score at least 3--if not more--stars. I added a fourth star because, although I found no absolutely unforgettable lines to quote, Mrs. Joyce writes well and injects several brilliant metaphors, and the book, overall, steadily engages the reader. The characters, and their actions, are believable. However, like an afterclap, she tarnishes for me the whole book with an unnecessary 21 page epilogue that, down to the last sentence, repudiates the theme of self-destruction she's worked to achieve in 430 pages. Suddenly and out of all character to the rest of the book, the remaining family members become a happy, loving family with a healthy, productive future. It's as if Oates didn't have the gonads to leave her characters crushed and destitute. Instead, she rushed a happy ending that redeems the human condition.

Otherwise she has a tendency to repeat verbs three times in a row, ostensibly to achieve a certain story-telling effect, but it becomes overworked by the fifteenth time she uses it. Good character development (if the Mulvaneys leave you enraged with what appears spineless and idiotic behavior, then Oates has done her job--she's faithfully represented the spineless and idiotic behavior in your communities all around you--open you eyes). This is not a tour de force or an epic; that would require 250 more pages and a little better writing. I recommend this Oprah (...meh) Book Club selection.

New words: cloche, jodhpurs, chignon

While the characters were written well and the dialogue was top notch- this books was unbelievably depressing.
Would be fascinating to see how the lives of the 4 children of the alcoholic father and the kind mother turn out after 20 years from the book ending. I could see the would be scientist who kidnapped the bum who raped his sister, turning out like the dad and drinkng himself to death while the marine would be a great person. The raped daughter got MARRIED which I found totally out of character as the violent rape messed her up forever to commit to anyone. The last of the 4 children was a journalist who would have never married and died lonely.

Ever read a novel that's so good — so GREAT — that you feel as if any words you might have to say about would seem wholly inadequate? That's the way I feel about WE WERE THE MULVANEYS, a novel that is like a heart breaking one micromillimeter at a rime, spreading implacably like a fracturing glacier in the face of global warming, inevitable and horror and impossible to not see.

The Mulvaneys are as all-American as a family can possibly be, framers and tradespeople, leaders in their all-American community, admired across every cross-section of community. Then something just as all-American happens — the Mulvaneys lone girl, Marianne, is raped at a high school party — and the result is a decline and dissolution so sad and ineviable because this happened in the 1970 and polite society had no language, inside the heart or outside of it, to address it. Mike Sr. can't stand to see his daughter not because he blames her but because he can'r avenge her. Corinne, the mother, smiles distractedly and speaks in platitudes and smiles even wider when everybody scatters. Mike Jr. joins the Marines; Patrick escapes to Cornell; Marianne is packed off like a dirty secret to far-flung relatives; and Judd, the youngest, is left to slowly piece together whatever the hell happened, which nobody will discuss.

WE WERE THE MULVANEYS is not a thriller, though the rapist is violently confronted; the damage is done long before that happens, and violence offers nothing resembling catharsis. Instead, it is an uncomfortably close look at how everybody's inability to handle what happens dissolves them like slow-motion acid, setting them adrift on courses of quiet ruin, regardless of where they are and who they're with and what they're doing to pass the time and to make a living, or not quite a living. As the years pass, nothing can fix them — especially not talk, that great American Band-Aid — and all that's left is the specifics of their ruination. It takes a writer of remarkable strength to follow each member of the Mulvaneys into their own heart of darkness without offering any of them easy outs or appearing to marinate in their pain, but Joyce Carol Oates is more than up to the task, and her peeks behind the black curtains of their souls are as compelling as they are crushing.

I'm glad I read WE WERE THE MULVANEYS. I'm not sure I'd ever be strong enough to read it again. So I admire the strength of someone who surely had to do that, over and over and over and over, in the course of creating it. Joyce Carol Oates is an American treasure., No big secret, there; but I think sometimes she gets overlooked as just that because she's so prolific and because she's a woman and she's associated with seminal work from nearly a half-century ago more than she is with equally standout work of more recent vintage. But she is the recording secretary of the American meeting of souls, more than any other author I could name.

Duokit man šeimos istorijų ir aš jas suskaitysiu visas. Man patinka ilgos ir gilios istorijos, kuriose kiekvienas šeimos narys išnarstomas po kaulelį, tada analizuojami tarpusavio santykiai ir čia atsiveria tiek daug visko. Neaprėpiama galybė. To paties tikėjausi ir iš šio pasakojimo. Juolab, kad tarp mano skaitančių bičiulių jau girdėjau ne vieną gerą atsiliepimą.


Nesu citatų žmogus, bet vieną jų atsimenu jau ilgą laiką. Kalbu apie L.Tolstojaus frazę, kad visos laimingos šeimos yra vienodos, o nelaimingos – kiekviena vis kitaip. Taigi, Malveiniai, atrodo kaip dar viena banali laiminga šeima. Daug vaikų, mylintys ir laimingi tėvai, daug buities, šiek tiek erzelio, daug juoko ir nesusipratimų. Taip autorė mums bando parodyti Malveinius, nes taip juos mato kiti, bet šalia įspėja, kad viskas ne taip ir kad vienas įvykis pakeis visą šeimos gyvenimą. Taip ir atsitinka.

Gana ilgai teko laukti to įvykio. Pamažu pradedi nujausti kur istorija linksta, bet kadangi apimtis šeši šimtai puslapių, tai autorė negaili žodžių nusakyti smulkiausius dalykus. Kai atsitinka ta baisi šeimos tragedija, griūna viskas. Nebelieka to tobulo paveikslo, šeima atstumiama bendruomenės, nebesutaria tarpusavyje, piniginiai reikalai tampa tikru išbandymu. Kas baisiausia, kad scenarijus, kai kažkas atsitinka ir visi lyg vienas kumštis laikosi vienas kito, čia nepasiteisina. Gal apskritai gyvenime retai ta vienybė ištinka sunkiomis akimirkomis - nežinau. Šiuo atveju ji neištinka. Kraujuojanti žaizda šios šeimos kūne persisunkus pykčio, pagiežos, nepasitenkinimo, gėdos, melo, silpnumo ir visko ko tik nori, bet ne vienybės ir sugebėjimo stoti kaip vienas kumštis prieš visą pasaulį.

Manau, autorė gana stipri veikėjų išpildyme. Jie tokie skirtingi, apgalvoti iki menkiausių detalių, unikalūs ir net vaikai atitinka tradicinį suvokimą kaip kuris turi elgtis pagal gimomo laiką šeimoje - štai jaunėlis nuolat jaučiasi, kad geriausi dalykai įvyko iki jam gimstant ir jis nebuvo viso to dalis. Gana žavu man pasirodė tas sugebėjimas taip išvystyti knygos herojus ir sugebėti įsijausti kiekvieno jų situaciją.

Labai patiko. Pasirodė tikra, skaudu, bet išties čia ne dar viena šeimos istorija. Čia puiki šeimos istorija, kuri tikrai nepaliks abejingų.

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 done nothing wrong), the brothers eventually break apart due to these actions being taken, the father becomes a drunk, the marriage and family crumble...REALLY?? I felt there was too much time devoted on other characters. Who cares about the details of the character who drove Marianne to her grandmother's funeral. It took way too much time for the plot to thicken. Too much time spent on the darn cat. I was ready to put the book down for good middle-way, because by the time I got that far, I looked back thinking, 'so just what IS going on here? Is it going to be about exacting revenge, the family falling apart, what!?!' But being the person that I am, I usually finish, and I did. So, it's like they all barely have contact with each other, or they hate each other, til someone dies, then all of a sudden the mother wants a family reunion, they all come together and it's like they've been best friends for years. Everything is perfect. Mind you that this is at the VERY, VERY end of the book. If I had been Marianne, cast out by my own family like I was a piece of trash because I had been raped, there is no way I would give them the time of day. Her father didn't even want to see her until he was on his deathbed!! Ugh! I think this book infuriated me more than anything.

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 had to convince myself to keep on reading.
Which means that while I was reading this novel, I didn't think that I was reading a 5-star book. That IS the case, however, now that I look back on it. Because "We Were the Mulvaneys" is simply too epic a tragic family story to not be a 5-star read. It's one of those books that I know will stay with me for months to come; especially because of the members of this family...
Rarely have I come across a set of characters that I was so engaged in as I was with the Mulvaneys. Michael Sr., Corinne, Mike Jr., Patrick, Marianne, Judd - their names are tattooed to my brain and I feel like I'm now part of their family because I've been following them so well. Especially Corinne turned into one of those fictional personnages that is and will rest very close to my heart. Furthermore, the long years that we get to follow them come with engaging anecdotes - and when those anecdotes are referenced back to several hundred pages later, you get the feeling that this is a JOURNEY (with capital letters) you've been on - I liked that feeling.
This is my review of "We Were the Mulvaneys". I haven't touched at all upon the plot; only on my feelings. I hope you can use this in some ways, because sometimes what you remember from a book is how you felt while you were reading it - not much of the actual plot itself (which I do remember vividly as well, but I want for YOU to experience it for yourself). Good luck, and say hi to the Mulvaneys from me when you encounter them!

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 auctions
2. a motorcyle
3. a drunk's last request
4. unclear
5. the Marine Corps

The Chicago Tribune characterized this book as demonstrating something along the lines of "the abiding ties of love," or some such crap.

Give me a break.

Confidential to Joyce Carol Oates: enough with the exclamation points to show that a character is excited or enthusiastic or whatever.

Šeimos sagos yra visiškas gėris. Dar didesniu gėriu jos tampa tada, kai būna tokios kaip ši. Tamsios, klampios, narstančios šeimos narių santykius po kaulelį ir neriančios į tamsiausias sielos gelmes. Istorija sukasi aplink vieną tragiškai skaudų įvykį, apie kurį nenoriai kalbama ne tik miestelyje, bet ir pačių Malveinių namuose. Tik niekas nesupranta, kaip tai paveiks šeimos narių likimus. Rašytoja tragišką šeimos likimą pateikia kaip pamoką. Apie stiprybę, apie naivumą, nuo kurio net šiek tiek pykina, apie viltį, meilę ir ryšį. Bet kokia viso kaina? Kodėl norint atrasti savyje tam tikrus jausmus, reikia išgyventi tragediją? 

Veikėjai čia tampa savi, nors jų gal ir nelabai mėgsti, bet supranti, kad jie juk negali būti tobuli ir nušlifuoti. Jie turi būti tikri, savi ir liūdesį keliantys, kad sulipdytų visą Malveinių paveikslą. Ir kalbu ne tik apie šeimos narius, nes atrodė, kad čia kiekvienas veikėjas tampa svarbiu, lyg dėlionės detalė, be kurios nebūtų visos visumos. Ir taip, nors visuma čia tamsi ir skausminga, autorė kupina detalumo, jausmingumo ir daugiasluoksniškumo. Kur kiekvienas žodis ir kiekviena paslaptis paslėpta tarp eilučių čia itin reikšminga.

Puiki knyga mėgstantiems šeimos istorijas, kurios paliečia iki pirštų galiukų ir neleidžia pamiršti. Nors ir pasakoja apie dalykus, kurių nelinki patirti, negali atsigrožėti viskuo nuo romano pradžios iki pabaigos, o kur dar tobulai šiai knygai išverstas tekstas. Rekomenduoju!

Es un libro que transcurre lento,reflexivo.Su mérito mayor es que la familia Mulvaney no parece ser ficción, los personajes están tan bien hechos y son tan humanos que parece que los conocieras.

A slog. A well-written slog, mind you, because this is Joyce Carol Oates and she’s a friggin master of the written word—our greatest living writer? I’m becoming more convinced with each year—but I didn’t quite “connect” with We Were the Mulvaneys, often touted as Oates’s masterpiece. It was an Oprah Book Club pick!

What was I found was this book is okay. Set in mid-70s rural New York, this is the story of the Mulvaneys: a well-to-do family, well-liked and sociable in their small town. Their teenaged daughter is raped; from there, over the course of years, the family falls to ruin.

Because this is Oates, great care is taken with the abuse that is the heart of this novel; the abuse and the reaction(s) to it. The Mulvaneys are fully realized and relatable, if not likable.

But somewhere along the way it’s like Oates loses the plot, or gets caught up in her own writing. I’m rarely one to say this, especially about my favorite author, but this book could’ve been trimmed down—making for an effective novella or short novel. Its actual form makes for a bloated, occasionally effective meandering mess that feels half-baked and strangely cold. I could never find my way “in” with these characters or their situations. The longtime family dramas in them and Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. grabbed me deeply, broke my heart and made me commiserate with the characters. When reading this I found myself counting pages.

That said, I can’t bear to give this less than 3 stars, if for nothing more than the exquisite prose. I also didn’t mind the ending; Oates wraps up things well enough. A masterpiece? No. Go read Blonde instead.

Tolstoy opens his Anna Karenina with the famous quote: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It seems so appropriate to We Were the Mulvaneys.

Oates spends about 100 pages telling us how good and normal and happy is this family. It began to get on my nerves, frankly. "C'mon, make something happen here." So she did. All over the cover of my copy, reviewers were saying how Oates had created a novel "about the compelling ties of love" and "the value of hope and compassion." The people who said that determined to conclude just the opposite of what Oates wrote, that Oates showed what could happen if you did not value hope and compassion, if you broke the ties of love.

Yes, I wanted her characters to have behaved differently. It's very difficult to tell why without spoilers. I did ask my husband what his father would have done in the same circumstances. "He'd have killed the bastard." Well, vigilante justice is one approach. Actually, it is part of the story - the only part that makes sense to me. Everything else I fought against. The story just keeps you reading even if you want the story to go in a different direction. Oates is good that way - there is no point in my reading something if it just leaves me in my comfort zone page after page.

I have a couple of complaints. I did think she was repetitive about some things. She might not have said the same thing in the same way every time, but I got it - get on with it! And then there is the prose. I complain when authors write too many sentence fragments. There were lots of them in this. I finally stopped fighting that, too, though. I didn't have the energy to fight both the prose and the characters. For this latter reason, I can give this only 4 stars, even though I'm not likely to forget it for awhile.

[This is my 500th review on Goodreads. Must mark this milestone someplace.]