Welcome to the Family -- review of We Were the Mulvaneys

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



It wasn't the plot that grabbed and held my interest. It was the way the story was told -- layer upon layer, putting me inside the mind of each family member. I got involved in the lives, the thoughts, the emotions of all of them. To me, they were alive, and I would have been interested in anything and everything they did. I was hooked and would have been happy if it had continued for another four hundred pages.

One of my goodreads friends warned me that this book is depressing. I found it inspiring. With the exception of the father, Mulvaney family members are all resilient. The survive and move on from events that at first seem disastrous. Those events change the direction of their lives, but they grow stronger and in the long run wind up happier than they would have been otherwise..

For me, the conclusion -- a family Fourth of July gathering was particularly poignant as I, by chance, read it alone, covid-sequestered, on the Fourth of July, with fireworks going off in the background.




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