We Were the Mulvaneys

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Readers have reacted in sharply contrasting ways to the dilemma of the heart of the novel: If a loving, family-oriented woman must choose between her husband and one of her children, whom does she choose? Corinne Mulvaney is a deeply, unself-consciously religious woman who acts out of love and duty, but also with an unquestioned sense of God's intentions. She doesn't think of herself her own wishes but those of others; until the end of the novel, when she befriends an energetic, irrepressible woman named Sable, Corinne doesn't think of herself as an individual at all. She's Corinne Mulvaney, known to everyone as Michael Mulvaney's wife. Her behavior will seem baffling, even unconscionable, to those who don't share her faith. I don't believe that, in her place, I would have acted as she did, but I don't judge her harshly. Perhaps I even envy her faith. Darwin and the theory of evolution are discussed at several points in the novel. What point is Oates trying to make with this? How does Darwinian evolution relate to the central incident of the book?

There were those times when the telephone rang, and she could not locate a phone amid the clutter. She rushed, she stumbled – for what if it was Michael Sr., her beloved husband of whom she thought, worried obsessively as the mother of an infant if physically parted from the infant thinks and worries obsessively of the infant even when her mind appears to be fully engaged, if not obsessed, with other matters. How did this book touch your life? Can you relate to it on any level? What do you believe is the message the author is trying to convey to the reader? Judd imagines but does not invent. He’s the intellectual and moral center of the novel, as it is presented in terms of language. It’s fitting that he’s a newspaper editor and writer. Many people in families feel themselves in repositories of the family narrative —as Judd says, he is assembling a kind of family album, not writing a “confession.” The Mulvaney family's idyllic life on their farm is characterized by innocence and unity. However, a tragic event disrupts this innocence, sending ripples through the family's dynamics. The theme of innocence is central as the characters grapple with the loss of their innocence and the unraveling of their tightly-knit relationships. Primarily, I wanted to write about family life —the mysterious and seemingly autonomous “life” of the family that is made up of individuals yet seems to transcend individuals; the joys, the sorrows, the continuity of jokes and humor; the shared pain; the conflicted yearning for freedom simultaneous with the yearning for domesticity; always, the unspeakable mystery at the heart of the family. I wanted to write about complex lives as they are interwoven with one another, always defining themselves in terms of one another.Malveiniai nuo pat kūrinio pradžios piešiami kaip mano įsivaizdavimą atitinkanti tradicinė amerikiečių šeima. Didelė, garsi, turinti kartais keistų tradicijų, ir net jei ne visada tobulai sutarianti, kažkokiu būdu vis viena labai vieninga. Pasakodama apie šios iš pirmo žvilgsnio tvirtos kaip kumštis šeimos byrėjimą autorė yra labai rūpestinga su kiekvienu jos nariu – iki smulkiausių kaulelių išnarstome visus, ir būtent todėl ta šeima skaitytojui tampa tokia brangi. Jie – tai žmonės, kuriuos pažįsti, jie – kartais tavo paties atspindys, net jei iš pradžių gali pasirodyti be galo tolimi, atskirti vandenyno, kito laikotarpio ir visiškai skirtingos aplinkos. Tačiau žmogiškos patirtys yra universalios, o čia jų pilna. Ir dažniausiai jos skaudžios, tokios, nuo kurių norėtųsi nusisukti, į kurias mieliau nežiūrėtum. Bet būtent to pasekmes šis kūrinys ir meistriškai narsto, o skaitytojas paliekamas tvarkytis su krūva emocijų, kurias tai palieka. The novel's exploration of trauma and its aftermath underscores the importance of empathy and understanding in the face of adversity. It prompts readers to reflect on their own capacity for empathy and their role in supporting individuals and families navigating similar challenges. 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. Ms. Oates, who is childless, dedicates her novel to "my" Mulvaneys. But you don't need to have a large family to appreciate this emotionally charged story. For Joyce Carol Oates is a truly gifted storyteller who artfully handles multi-charactered and multi-layered pieces of fiction. An extraordinary woman of letters, Ms. Oates has also authored twenty-one volumes of short stories and more than a dozen works of non-fiction. This, combined with her twenty-five previous novels, adds up to more than fifty books by a fifty-seven-year-old woman.

Both parents reject their daughter after the rape. Why? How are their reasons different? Are we meant to condemn both of them for their cruelty to Marianne? Or is their action somehow understandable and forgivable?

READERS GUIDE

In We Were the Mulvaney's animals are almost as important as people. I wanted to show the tenderness in our relationships with cats, dogs, and horses. Especially cats. Marianne's cat Muffin was based on a real cat of that name and everything about him in the novel is, or was, true in life. Marianne's experience is exactly what mine was. Muffin's life was saved for 13 miraculous months. Or, his death was forestalled. Exactly as in We Were the Mulvaneys, except that I was already married, and all the circumstances were different. This is a sentimental confession, but I may as well make it... Marianne, who at this reunion (now in her early thirties, Michael her father dead) appears with two children and her husband Will, having finally found herself in a life that seemed to be taken away from her by the years of separation, infrequent communication with her mother and siblings, and total rejection by her father who in his own mind still loved her but couldn’t bear the thinking of her or of what had happened or of what she had done or of what he had done. And as Judd writes of this reunion, “I saw that Marianne was in the prime of her young womanhood … color restored … a fullness to her face … the liquidy yearning in the eyes eased … and her life independent of all Mulvaneys if she should wish it.” Michael Mulvaney begins drinking heavily, which makes him miss work. He starts spending more time in the working-class bars that he used to frequent before his roofing business prospered and the Mulvaneys became socially prominent. Old friends avoid him and his family, which feeds his resentment. One night, an old acquaintance who runs a seedy inn and tavern where the Mulvaneys used to go when they were a young married couple calls: he tells Corinne that she has to come and get her husband, who has been hurt in a fight. Spending the night with him in one of the inn's rooms, Corinne realizes that her main commitment is to her husband. The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.

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. The next section is REALLY a spoiler, since it tells how everything eventually turns out. Please be fore-warned. If Michael Sr. had behaved differently, the Mulvaney tragedy would not have occurred. In the past, laws concerning rape and sexual assault were not as liberal as they are today in most states. Marianne knew that it would have been futile to press charges under the circumstances. Her latest book, Middle Age: A Romance, introduces just such a character, Adam Berendt, who dies trying to save a young girl from drowning. Berendt enters the wealthy New York suburb of Salthill-on-Hudson and, through the pureness of his heart, persuades its avaricious residents that it is not too late to change. Middle Age is intensely realistic, a facsimile of fraught modern America, particularly the women in it, "who are accustomed to not seeing imperfections in men, though anxiously aware of the smallest imperfections in themselves". Oates was amazed when some critics read it as a piece of satire. "When most people write about the suburbs of America, particularly the women of the upper middle class, they're very satirical and harsh. But I know these women and I see no justification for being cruel to them. They're actually very wonderful people. Some reviewer made the point that the characters were despicable, but that the author showed compassion for them, whereas I didn't feel they were despicable at all. In a world in which there are serial killers and genocide, these people are basically well intentioned." I am ashamed to be seen reading anything baring the "Oprah's Book Club" stamp, but I must say that I am never truly deeply disappointed by the selections. (Some do manage to achieve classic status.) Until now. (Is this the very reason the club dismantled and lost the cred????)I asked one of my friends to recommend a good book to close out the year, and this is what she suggested. And just...wow! This was a superb read. The writing was impeccable and the story was riveting. I’ve always wanted to read something by Joyce Carol Oates, and I’m so glad to be able to say I finally did. 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. He querido leer este libro desde hace años, cualquiera que me conozca sabe lo mucho que lo busqué por todos lados, incluso en librerías en Estados Unidos, por algún motivo su edición había sido descontinuada y se habían retirado todas las copias disponibles de librerías. En cuanto a la traducción, en general me ha parecido correcta, pero… hay cositas, cositas aquí y allá como: Animals play a tremendously important part in the book —in a sense the Mulvaneys communicate and love through their animals. Have animals always been important to you? Did you have some larger message in mind that you wanted to express through animals?