We Were the Mulvaneys (Oprah's Book Club)
Joyce Carol Oates
Language: English
Pages: 454
ISBN: 0452282829
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A New York Times Notable Book and a former Oprah Book Club® selection
Moving away from the dark tone of her more recent masterpieces, Joyce Carol Oates turns the tale of a 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. The Mulvaneys of High Point Farm in Mt. Ephraim, New York, are 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 Mulvaneys will slide, almost imperceptibly at first, from the pinnacle of happiness, transformed by the vagaries of fate into a scattered collection of 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 among them, reuniting in the spirit of love and healing. Profoundly cathartic, Oates' acclaimed novel unfolds as if, in the darkness of the human spirit, she has come upon a source of light at its core. Rarely has a writer made such a startling and inspiring statement about the value of hope and compassion.
Reader's Digest International (January 2015)
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her eyes and read her unworthy thoughts. She protested, “Oh, Miss Hagström—you can’t expect me to ‘critique’ your poetry. I have only a high school diploma, I flunked out of college—” Penelope Hagström, regal in her wheelchair, her hawkish face uplifted, said, “Of course I can, Marianne, and I do. You’re an intelligent young woman. Much more intelligent, I’ve come to see, than you let on. To whom do you imagine I’m writing my poetry, if not to ‘Marianne Mulvaney’? Not to the dear departed dead
country apart and led to the Civil War and almost four hundred thousand deaths, such a cruel, inhuman, ignorant piece of legislation, and now in enlightened times wouldn’t you think our leaders would have learned from the past? “First Kennedy, then Johnson, and now Nixon!” Mom cried. “What we need to save us is a true Christian leader, before it’s too late.” “Yes,” said Dad, “—but the fact remains, the war needs to be fought.” “No, no it doesn’t! You’re wrong!” “Because the Communists have to
Mulvaneys, surely. And so this episode, Corinne Mulvaney bursting into Dr. Oakley’s office with her hysterically weeping young daughter, would be murmured of, spoken of, relayed by telephone and in person like an electronic news bulletin flung in myriad directions simultaneously through Mt. Ephraim before Michael Mulvaney would have heard of it himself.) In Dr. Oakley’s consulting room, as Corinne would tell Michael that evening, Marianne grew calmer. It was a familiar place, and Dr. Oakley
conviction I should be) and more excitement among the family, watching TV for a while if something “worthwhile, educational” was on: history, science and biography documentaries on public television were favored by our parents. And we’d discuss them during, and afterward—we Mulvaneys were a family who talked. So when around 10 P.M. I staggered upstairs to bed it was with the gravity of a stone sinking slowly through deep, dark water. Sometimes I fell asleep half in my pajamas, lying sideways on
eighty-nine students of Mt. Ephraim High’s 1976 graduating class, all but a handful had always been wary of Patrick Mulvaney; uncomfortable around him as of an adult in disguise in their midst. They admired him, and feared him, and did not much like him; he responded by looking through them, when he could not avoid looking at them. This included even the three or four who’d once counted themselves his friends. Whatever Patrick’s classmates were thinking of Marianne, now mysteriously departed