I was really genuinely excited to read this book. I tend to like harrowing family sagas. If you’ve seen my earlier posts, you know how much I enjoyed reading Peyton Place. One of my all-time favourite books is Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. I distinctly remember wanting to read that book as slowly as I possibly could because I didn’t want it to end, yet I read it in just a few days because I couldn’t put it down.
Like Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, We were the Mulvaneys first came to prominence as one of Oprah’s Book Club picks – a guarantee for bestseller status in America. (It was exactly this accolade that made me snobbishly reluctant to read Poisonwood for so long. I figured if so many people loved it, how good could it be? How wrong I was!)
So I got stuck in to the Mulvaneys with high hopes. The story is set in 1970s upstate New York, as a close-knit, seemingly perfect, family of six reels from the devastating circumstances that befall the only Mulvaney daughter on the night of a school dance. The local community, who the Mulvaneys once counted as friends, are unsupportive and callously indifferent. Some are even pleased to witness the Mulvaneys fall from grace. The family’s saga is told from the perspective of Judd, the youngest Mulvaney son who is looking back on the situation from adulthood. In principle, this is an interesting narrative device, because the youngest son often didn’t know exactly what was going on or why his family life was beginning to disintegrate. From my point of view, however, Oates has difficulty keeping the narrative voice consistent and it’s unclear how Judd is able to relay much of what he tells us from his sheltered, uninformed position.
More than anything, Oates’ prose is so often over-long and many pages of description added little to my overall reading experience. Also, certain devices that are meant to draw us further within the family unit, like the frequent Mulvaney use of multiple pet names, just starts to grate. While this book is meant to be deeply moving, I found it profoundly average.
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