4,5...Una tremenda novela que es imposible que deje indiferente, la historia nos narra como un dramático suceso destruye una familia que parecía perfecta. Las decisiones que toman cada uno de sus integrantes condicionan el destino de esta familia. Una novela dura, con muchas descripciones como es usual en las historias de Oates pero las cuales nos llevan a introducirnos en el alma de cada uno de los protagonistas además de ser un retrato de la sociedad norteamericana de la época. Muy buena!

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 him really by proxy. It was an attack on him, something was taken away from him. The community whose respect he tried to earn so hard committed the ultimate act betrayal and disrespect. Like so many backwards fathers, he thinks his daughter’s virginity belongs to him. So any crime committed against her is actually committed against him and his property. The father’s unhealthy obsession with female virginity can be noticed very early on, when he is courting his future wife.

The novel is so psychologically intricate – Oates documents all the little things, the minute failures in communication that build up until everything reaches the point of no return. I particularly enjoyed the description of how the family communicates through their pets in a way of avoiding having difficult conversations. The daughter’s only act of rebellion noted was this one time when she broke from this established form of communication and snapped at her mother. It was such a small thing, but it left ripples. As a person with an easy access to her store of anger and rage, I found the mother’s and daughter’s inability to get angry perplexing and frustrating, but possibly, understandable in its context.

It was also interesting how the whole family, the parents especially, believed their own hype of being this picture perfect unit, the embodiment of the American dream, whereas to this reader they didn’t seem that special to begin with, therefore their downfall wasn’t as surprising as it was to them. When the reality started contradicting their own image they built in their heads, well, that’s too bad for reality. We never actually see the family through any outsider’s eyes, so we have no idea if their opinion of themselves is shared by their neighbours or if it’s just some group delusion.

The book is written from the POV of Judd, the youngest child of the Mulvaneys. This narrator occasionally becomes omniscient, he remembers things he wasn’t around for. This structure might sound messy, but was in fact very intricate, ellipting the main event, which nonetheless overshadows the whole story to the end.

DID NOT FINISH. For those who don't know, I moved into a community co-op here in Chicago earlier in the year; and one of the people I now live with, a 75-year-old former '60s hippie, is assembling his latest book of poetry which I'm helping him proofread and lay out, which among other things includes several odes to the work of Joyce Carol Oates, an author I'm not familiar with at all, which recently inspired me to try at least the three specific novels that my housemate references in his own poetry book. Unfortunately, though, We Were the Mulvaneys seems to have been the wrong one to start with, or at least according to both my reaction to it and my friends' comments on the book here at Goodreads; for at 500 pages, Oates' infamously rambling prose and obsessive focus on throwaway details does her manuscript no favors here, the story of a farm family who are ripped apart in the 1970s by an event I'll let remain a surprise, but that apparently doesn't actually happen until you're nearly 300 pages into the story. I can't attest to that myself; because three weeks after I first checked out the ebook from my local library and had it then expire and automatically delete itself from my Kindle, I still had barely made it past page 75, a novel so slow and so digressive that I literally kept falling asleep every time I tried to tackle a few more pages of it. The next Oates title in my reading list is 1990's I Lock My Door Upon Myself, which at a much more manageable 98 pages is a book I'm feeling a lot more confident about actually finishing; for those of you like me who are just starting out with her and want to explore a bit about why she's so beloved, I would suggest that you too start with one of her much smaller and more digestible titles. Check back here next week for more!

Manau tai buvo labai geras pasirinkimas pirmai Naujųjų metų knygai. Pradžioje gal šiek tiek erzino smulkus gamtovaizdžio, gatvių aprašymas. Atrodo bando atpasakoti žemėlapį kaip iš taško A patekti į tašką B. Dabar, kai jau baigiau skaityti knygą gal ir suprantu kodėl viskas buvo taip smulkiai aprašoma. Ne tik gamtos ir miesto, bet ir kiekvieno Malveinių šeimos nario portretas aprašomas iki smulkmenų. Gana ilgai skaičiau šią knygą, todėl pasijaučiau, kad tapau jų šeimos dalimi. Kartu skaudžiai išgyvenau “TO” įvykio pasekmes.
Ši šeimos istorija mane palietė. Kiekvienas laikmetis turi tam tikras visuomenės nuostatas, taisykles, požiūrį į dalykus. .Ir manau kiekvienas savaip sudėtingas. Visi nori pritapti, būti mėgiamais visuomenėje. Kartais dėl to net paaukodami artimuosius. Skaitydama negalėjau neprisiminti dviejų man labai patikusių knygų, kurios kažkuo man panašios. Tai būtų Donna Tarrt Dagilis ir mano 2022 metų geriausia knyga Trent Dalton Berniukas nuryja visatą. Tai absoliučiai skirtingos istorijos, bet savo emociniu sunkumu, jas skaitant man jos visiškai vienodos. Įsijauti, išgyveni kartu ir nieko negali dėl to padaryti.

n  

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.

n
** 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 barest glimpse at any newspaper will, surely, undermine that ideal. Cruel things happen in families - sometimes deliberately, sometimes, as here, unintentionally.

A father faced with his own shaming powerlessness of which his innocent daughter becomes the unwitting living reminder, a mother torn between her spouse and her child... these are the building blocks of tragedy here. JCO doesn't blame, doesn't judge - we can, if we choose, but perhaps we get more out of the book by understanding emotional positions that we might not share. Is that not one of the reasons we read, to experience life through someone else's eyes?

When I started this book I thought it was going to be about one thing Marianne's rape and the aftermath and was slightly impatient that there was so much other stuff - until I realised that 'it' might be a catalyst but that really the focus of the book is the imperfect dynamics of the family itself, the way it tears itself apart before partially putting itself tentatively back together again. That 'were' in the title is both a past tense and a continuous present.

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 connection. The way sentences and phrases were repeated was reminescent of the speech of someone in a highly emotional state. It reminded me of when I am very angry or upset and am trying to convey something towards the source of my anger/sadness/passion and I feel the need to repeat what I find so important, even if it's really a minor issue. That was how Oates writing felt a lot of the times. It's probably why I found myself getting upset, frustrated, curious, or sad, because she wrote in a way to help push those emotions to the front.

Of course the subject matter really increased my emotions. The things this family went through and how they dealt with is enough to break your heart just hearing about it, let alone suddenly becoming very involved. All the characters are sympathetic, even Michael Sr., who is pretty easy to hate. Everyone we encounter is flawed and real and that makes you feel for them so much more. Of course the one you feel for the most is Marianne, the true victim in all of this. Yet, somehow she manages to move on with her life and become the strongest of all the Mulvaneys. She's filled with hope and love and the fact she maintains that after her rape and then the odd rejection of her family is truly amazing.

The last part of the book and the ending was very bittersweet. As much as you want to be happy you can't help feeling something is just not letting you achieve that. It's probably the same thing the Mulvaneys are feeling by the end. Somehow we've become the Mulvaneys by just a few chapters into the book, so truly whatever they're feeling, you're now feeling. That just got you all the more involved in the book, because of course you want to know everything that happens and why. It also makes the book that much harder to put down.

I've read Foxfire and want to reread it now, but I remember it's tone and style being extremely different from We Were the Mulvaneys. I haven't read any of Oates other works, though. Do they all vary from each other? Do they live up to the greatness of We Were the Mulvaneys? Should I try out her other works, or am I just destined to be disappointed after this book? I would love to hear your opinions on Oates other works as well as what you thought of We Were the Mulvaneys. Did y'all enjoy it as much as I did and have it affect you like it did me? Please share.

To sum it all up, I think the Los Angeles Times Book Review says it best: "Will break your heart, heal it, then break it again."

This is serious literature. Oates writing is sharp as always and her point is easily understood.
Riffing off Tolstoy's quote, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Oates addendum is happy families are fragile and made to be unhappy in innumerable ways.

My problems with this novel are both in its form and its content.

Oates' point is simple and I don't disagree, but there's the rub. Why spend 450 pages draping this idea when I got it from just a few sentences?

Do I need the names of all the animals on the farm? The furniture oddities that Corinne collects? They shape of spring flowers? The deep description of one-page characters?

The response to this is something along the lines of,"this is Oates' very literary take on her core message." Fine, but it's a weak sauce bc her story is false. It is contrived. An example that has gone chasing a meaning. That in a nutshell is why I have little patience for all serious literature.

Why write a message of a novel and cloak it in fakery. Tell me a true story and let me draw what I may from the ambiguities and ambivalence the real world offers up. Don't spend time creating verisimilitude that for all its skill is just untrue.

Now to the critique of the contents: I simply don't buy the characters reactions to the event that precipitates the novel's playing out. Oates is trying to prove her point and she does not execute. I especially don't believe the father's downward spiral, nor the family's overall response to marianne.

Don't misunderstand, I believe there could be a family where the events might play out as Oates argues - but not this family, and not how she describes the characters.

Finally, the ending is wholly undeserved.

I have now read a few of Joyce Carol Oates' novels. Them comes immediately to mind. Initially this novel, including the writing style, seems so very different from Them. JCO makes extensive use of foreshadowing, and I find myself hoping for a different outcome than what has been indicated. The characters that JCO creates are rich in detail and depth, although at times I struggle trying to understand them. In the case of Corinne and Mike Sr., I had difficulty reconciling who these characters were at the beginning of the novel and who they became as the novel progressed. It just did not seem very likely or logical. I could not draw a line from where they started to where they ended up. With that said, the characters did become real to me. I found myself wanting to shout at them, to do something to help them recognize the impact of their behavior and actions.

I am impressed with JCO's skill as a writer. She delivers a complex plot with richly drawn characters and events that frustrate the reader as much as they challenge the characters. I did not like how the story ended; I felt the ending was not honest to the story.

5/5

Kokia skausmingai graži knyga. Viena tų, ilgų, kur kiekvieną veikėją pažįsti iš visokiausių pusių ir galiausiai kiekvieną savaip prisijaukini – netobulą, gal net visai nemielą, bet tiek pat artimą, kiek savos šeimos narys. Ir tiek pat po to, kai kartu 600 puslapių praleidai, mylimą ir saugomą. Jau seniai man nebuvo taip, kad net raidžių per ašaras nematyčiau – jei vietomis tik elegantiškai ritosi, tai į galą jau tiesiog kūkčiojau į megztinio atlapą. Čia tiek nesuvaidinto, tikro skausmo, be dramos vardan dramos, tiek daug buities, kuri patraukia paprastumu – kito autoriaus, ne tokio talentingo rankose, nesunku būtų nusukti į saldumą, susireikšminimą, tačiau šita knyga net neguli prie tų, kurias įprastai reklamuoja kaip „šeimos sagas“ – čia viena tų, kur bus vertinama kaip aukščiausio lygio klasika. Parašyta smulkmeniškai, elegantiškai, su milžiniška atida detalėms ir jausmams, visai jų amplitudei ne tik vienos šeimos, bet vieno miestelio, net vienos šalies kontekste.

Malveiniai aprėpia daugiau nei tik tuos šešis žmones, besidalinančius vienu stogu, o po to jau nebent vienu skausmu, viena pavarde – Oates perteikia to meto politinį, socialinį, net teisinį paveikslą. Detalių tirštame tekste ypač daug slypi ir tarp eilučių - per vieną skaitymą visko nesugaudysi. Retai kada taip nutinka, kad ilga knyga man neprailgsta. Bet čia tiesiog leidausi nešama istorijos, skaitant iki tobulumo nugludintą Oates tekstą, elegantiškai ir skoningai išverstą Ievos Sidaravičiūtės. Iki tol dviems skaitytoms JCO knygoms turėjau priekaištų, o prieš šitą tiesiog lenkiu galvą. Viskuo iki smulkmenų patikėjau, visus veikėjus savaip pamilau ir tikrai prie šitos knygos dar sugrįšiu – truputį mazochistiškai, truputį pavydžiai, puikiai suvokiant, kad kai kuriems – kalbu ir apie autorę, ir apie vertėją – buvo drebtelėta tiek talento.

n  Who doesn't desire his father's death?n
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 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.

Ci fu un momento di silenzio tra noi. Capivo che non dovevo parlare, dire una parola. Come avessimo vissuto così, a nostro agio l'uno con l'altro, per i quattordici anni in cui ci eravamo persi.

We were the Mulvaneys è la storia della società americana che caratterizzava una certa epoca, ma prima ancora è la storia di una famiglia perfetta che subisce un colpo, la perfezione s'incrina, tocca terra, e poi si spezza. E cosa succede a una famiglia perfetta che si spezza? Tenta di ricomporsi? Può ricomporsi? Come? Andando ognuno per la propria strada. Faticando, piangendo, diventando se stessi e non la proiezione nella realtà di immagini mentali. È la storia straziante del disfacimento di una bellissima famiglia, dei motivi sociali che portano a tale disfacimento e della forza necessaria per ricostruire, per andare avanti.

È superfluo dire che questo romanzo mi è piaciuto tantissimo. Un po' meno superfluo dire che mi ha fatto piangere. Se un libro mi fa piangere è quasi sempre per due motivi: o i personaggi sono delineati benissimo, o il libro è scritto talmente bene da commuovere. Qui siamo nel primo caso pur non escludendo la scrittura fluida e ricca della Oates, una scrittura molto americana che mi ricorda parecchio Irving. I personaggi di questo libro mi sono entrati dentro. I personaggi di questo romanzo sono il romanzo. Ognuno ha un punto di vista assai differente; notevole soprattutto la religiosità molto radicata in alcuni personaggi e la totale assenza di essa in altri di loro.

Da cosa parte il disgregarsi dei Mulvaney? È un incidente, un "semplice incidente". Basta uno stupro, un po' di alcool, un po' di purezza di cuore a causa di Gesù, ed ecco che la società esclude questa famiglia, la bandisce dalla vita normale. Diventano come reietti, come degli esclusi. Non sono portatori di una malattia mortale. Sono persone normali il cui equilibrio familiare è stato turbato, sono incapaci di reagire perché fino a quel momento andava tutto bene e adesso la gente sembra far finta che non ci siano.

"La vita è cane che mangia cane, perché non ammetterlo? Lo avevano privato dell'attività che aveva impiegato una vita a costruire, gli avevano preso la casa-fattoria, la famiglia. Lo avevano succhiato e buttato come un guscio vuoto. I suoi nemici avevano fatto quadrato contro di lui, lo avevano portato alla rovina.
Beati i miti, beati i puri di cuore. Poveri cristiani talmente illusi che ti vien voglia di ridergli in faccia. Porgere l'altra guancia? Ti bastonano."
Colui che soffre più di tutti le conseguenze dell'incidente è il padre di famiglia, Michael Mulvaney Sr., che tanto amava Marianne, che tanto amava la sua figlia perfetta, così tanto da non ritenersene degno. E chi permette più di tutti che avvenga la distruzione della famiglia? Sempre lui. Più ha amato, più ha perso. È giusto che le sofferenze umane siano così mal distribuite?

C'è invece chi vuole vendicarsi.
"Non abbiamo avuto giustizia legale. Non ci è stato possibile. Papà ha tentato e ha fallito. Perché il sistema della giustizia legale è solo un'istituzione sociale, ed è inadeguato come espressione della morale. Il modo di procedere della "giustizia legale" è rivolgersi a una terza parte che sta al di sopra di "vittima" e "colpevole" e delle rispettive famiglie, una parte sanzionata dal popolo. Dallo stato. È lo stato ad amministrare la giustizia. Ma cos'è lo stato? Solo un insieme di persone. Esemplari di Homo sapiens. E perché quegli esemplari dovrebbero stare al di sopra di altri? Perché dovremmo concedere a estranei un'autorità morale che va oltre la nostra? Ci ho riflettuto su molto, Judd. Non agisco in maniera impulsiva. Con una parte della mente vedo sempre Marianne, violentata, svilita, esiliata persino dalla sua stessa famiglia. Come fossimo una tribù primitiva, Cristo santo! Come se nostra sorella fosse diventata portatrice di un tabù! È ridicolo, è intollerabile. Io non lo tollererò. Non sono più cristiano però per Dio sono un protestante. Un ribelle. Farò la mia giustizia perché so cos'è."
E che dopo essersi vendicato deve trovare con ancora più fatica la strada che lo faccia riscoprire se stesso.
"Dopo che me ne sono andato, quella domenica di Pasqua, ricordi? Mi sono svuotato. Il veleno che avevo nel sangue è colato fuori. Come fossi stato malato, infetto, e non me ne fossi accorto finch il veleno è scomparso. Però non rimpiango nulla. Penso che la vendetta debba essere bella. I greci lo sapevano. Sangue chiama sangue. Il bisogno di ristabilire l'equilibrio.[...]"

Sono consapevole del fatto che questa non è una recensione lodevole, e che probabilmente nemmeno si è capito molto di quello che ho detto. Ho pianto perché ho trovato commovente il perdersi e ritrovarsi di fratelli e sorelle e genitori, dopo che avevano litigato, che si erano picchiati, che si erano odiati, dopo che la società li aveva costretti a trovare ognuno la propria strada, a caversela da soli senza la propria famiglia. Ho pianto perché è un libro tristissimo, più scorrono le pagine più diventa deprimente e pesa addosso come un cappotto che in inverno non tiene caldo. Manca il respiro girando le pagine di una storia così tetra eppure vera, così reale e onesta. Penso che la Oates abbia scritto uno dei miei romanzi preferiti.

This is the third and last of this author's novels on my shelves and I don't think I will bother to seek out more. Although this is written in a much more readable style than the two in the Gothic quintet which I have recently read, it suffers from some of the same faults, being a bit too verbose and tending to go over trivia that are not really required to 'get' the family situation before it is irrevocably ruined.

The story is told in part by the youngest child of the Mulvaney family, Judd, and partly by an omniscient narrator. The Mulvaneys consist of parents and four children, three boys and one girl, who live on a ramshackle farm out of town, which isn't a serious farming endeavour as most of the land is on long leases to other farmers, or has been previously sold off. The family's wealth comes from a successful roofing business. They live a fairly idyllic life with lots of animals, including horses for the children to ride. The father is a handsome and popular businessman, while the mother is scatty, but a good homemaker and organiser of the children's lives. The eldest son shows some signs of possibly going off the rails, the middle son is extremely bright and seems to have a future mapped out as a scientist, and the baby of the family, Judd is more an amalgam of the rest (but tells the reader quite early on that he eventually becomes a successful newspaper editor). The daughter is good, kind, adored and popular at school, and her name, Marianne, is perhaps a clue that she is really an all-round Mary Sue rather than a real person.

Everything starts to become unravelled in 1976, when a terrible event happens to a particular child, following a school prom, and no justice is obtained, apart from some rough justice metered out much later by one of the other siblings. The father reacts very badly, ostracising the afflicted child. He becomes a pariah in the district with a failing business as he crawls into the bottle and racks up debts. The mother enables this blaming of the child - who internalises it as their fault - and organises for said child to be packed off to a distant relation, and to commence the process of dropping out of college without qualifications and being economically exploited. The mother often has little awareness of what is happening to that child or even how to make contact. Being in the 1970s, this is only possible via letter/postcard or telephone. Meanwhile, the eldest child joins the army and another of the siblings drops out from a promising future career, due to anger and disgust at the parents. The youngest has to put up with the increasingly dysfunctional home life as first the land and most of the animals are sold off, and finally the family home itself goes, against a background of occasional wife beating.

Although I appreciate that the child caught up in the initial disaster is damaged and has no support whatsoever from anyone, the fact that they have imbued the mother's uncritical Christianity and blame themselves as a result, does become hard to take at times. It is also clear that the mother is more upset about a kitten run over by the father at one point than the welfare of this child. Symbolically, it is only the arrival of that child at a refuge for injured animals, which triggers off the healing process. Rather implausibly, the story then jumps a few years to where they end up forgiving the father on his death bed, and then a happy ending five years later, with most of the children having partners and families of their own - something that comes across as rather rushed.

On the plus side, the story is well written if rather unnecessarily verbose in places, and a page turner in others, but on the negative side there was a lot concerning the attitude of the parents that I really disliked. So on the whole am rating this at 3 starts.