Missmeganbunny’s Weblog

I just finished reading We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. Oates is an author I came to know through her collections of scary stories (Haunted: Tales Of The Grotesque and The Collector Of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque, to be exact). I’ve always enjoyed her way of writing of people’s thoughts and feelings as if they were actual literal events. While her story collections were what some would call disappointing, I found her book Beasts (2002) to be quite exhilarating (sure wish I’d been writing about the books I was reading back then, because sadly enough I don’t really remember anything about the story itself).

After reading We Were The Mulvaneys, I have realized that Oates’s claim to fame lies not in the hit-or-miss short story collections, but in this novel (and probably other novels I have yet to read). This 454-page book is capable of evoking such a spectrum of feelings in the reader– it’s as if Oates were on remote access to my brain while I was reading. A few words can be ultimately used to categorize the book — “family”, “rape”, “a coming undone”… but the book was much more than the plot alone.

The plot, ah, yes. The story is about Michael Sr. and Corrine Mulvaney, a farm family living in the Chautauqua Valley area of New York. They have four children — Michael Jr., Patrick, Marianne and the youngest son, Judd (who is the supposedly unbiased and quite omnipresent voice of the story). The Mulvaneys seem to have a very beautiful, secluded life that others in their community may be envious of. They run a very large farm, living from the proceeds of Michael Sr.’s prosperous roofing company. They are what you might call “animal enthusiasts”– having not only an impressive collection of farm animals, but also many beloved pets of whom each Mulvaney has found a favorite. The Mulvaneys seem to be the picture of familial closeness and stability, until one fateful night when sweet, naive Marianne goes to her prom and is raped by a local teenage boy. She suffers through several agonizing days in secrecy and comes to the conclusion that she was very deserving of the assault. When the truth is revealed to Corrine, all hell breaks loose. Michael Sr. has an appetite for revenge, but Marianne remains stubbornly self-blaming to the point that causes her to be unable to testify against the perpetrator of the assault. With no option for legal recourse, Marianne’s father begins down a fast decline of mental soundness and stability. He decides that he cannot bear to see his daughter anymore, and Corrine agrees to send Marianne away to a distant relative for what turns out to be twelve long years.

In the meantime, Marianne’s older brother Patrick is also coming to know himself. He develops a passion, bordering obsession, with science, and succeeds in his studies. He graduates valedictorian and goes on to more success at Cornell University. In his deep thoughts about mankind and the way the world works, he comes to the conclusion that justice must be executed manually, and that man cannot rely of social structures to exact that justice. He decides to take matters of avenging the fallen Mulvaney family unit into his own hands, involving his younger brother Judd as something of an accessory to a major crime– or, almost.

The plot speeds up towards the end. I won’t give the ending away, but it really is sad. We get to watch each of the Mulvaneys, as they knew themselves, die slow and painful deaths, some in a literal sense. The family structure never goes back to the way it was, which really borders on cruelty to the reader, since we got to know the characters in such depth earlier on in the story.

The story itself was not what I’d call shocking, as there was little you couldn’t already see coming. However, like I’ve said, the story itself almost isn’t quite as important as the characters. The family unit. Like watching a beautiful, healthy child be stricken with a terminal illness and suffer out the rest of his pain-filled days… that’s what reading this book felt like.

On a personal note, I have to say that this story touched me on many levels. Corrine Mulvaney reminded me so much of a strange blend of my own mother and myself, as well as exemplified many qualities I would like to possess when I am a mother someday. She is chipper, strong and holds together the family with her ever-laughing, ever-whistling demeanor. Even though the children sometimes felt embarrassed of the way their mother was, she really was what kept them forward-moving. She was an immense strength, even when no one else was strong. She stayed strong and positive, even in the end when her entire life was falling apart. Some might call this blindness, craziness, or religious blind-craziness, but I call it strength. Now, Corrine had a major fault — she let her children slip away because she truly loved her husband more than she loved her children, as hard as that is to imagine. This was a pact they made with eachother before they even had children, and Corrine Mulvaney stayed true to it. This was imminently the downfall of the family unit, because her husband asked of her what no husband and father should ask of his wife and the mother of his offspring: to literally choose him over the children. I think that if Corrine could have adapted her promise to love her husband most to somehow not let it mean losing the children, she would have been a happier woman and would have had a happier family. But, alas, we all have our fatal flaws.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to get back in touch with their memories of family. Be warned, however… reading We Were The Mulvaneys WILL cause you to cry, a lot, and also to start thinking about owning a farm… possibly even simultaneously!

Happy Reading!

Mrs. B