Oprah Winfrey has chosen this 1996 book for her latest TV book discussion group. I reviewed this work when it first came out, but thought readers might like another look.
All publishers like to say that an author's latest work is his or her most ambitious book to date. Dutton offers this familiar phrase about Oates' new novel--"We Were the Mulvaneys." This time, the publisher is right on the mark.
When Dutton's senior publicist, Elizabeth Shreve, says, "Oates' 26th novel is a stunning and important new work that depicts, in a heartbreaking family story, the great power of compassion and love and suggests a fundamental confidence in the humanity of individuals . . .," she is absolutely correct.
I've always reviewed Oates' works with respect for her unique style and talent even when I didn't particularly like her story. This time, I'm having a hard time controlling my enthusiasm not only for the story, but the adjectives of praise extolling Oates' narrative expertise.
The Mulvaneys are a Norman Rockwellian, 1950s, kind of family that collides with the disenchanted, dysfunctional 90s in a burst of horrific consequences.
"What is a family, after all, except memories?" This question is addressed by Judson Andrew Mulvaney who is better known as "Judd," "Pretty Boy," or alternately as "Sourpuss," or "Ranger"----his favorite. Judd is your viewpoint character. He is also the baby of this family of six and feels a bit left out when his brothers and sister talk of events before his birth in 1963.
"The Mulvaneys were a family in which everything that happened to them was precious and everything that was precious was stored in memory and everyone had a history."
Many of the folks living near the Mulvaney's High Point Farm in upstate New York envied this high-spirited group. At least they did before the events of 1976 when everything came apart and was never again put together in quite the same way.
The story, from the 1950s through 1993, relates the tale of Michael Mulvaney, a roofing contractor, his tenderhearted, religious wife Corinne, and their four children. There's Mike Jr., a high school football hero and later heroic Marine; Patrick, the gifted son who strays into unconventional paths; Marianne, sweet and pure, sullied by life's harsh realities; and, of course, Judd. Judd who narrates his troubled family's shared experiences with all the facts and conjectures of a seasoned journalist.
The first third of the book is so wonderfully bucolic you literally bask in the moonlight as young Judd comes of age amid wild deer, riding ponies, and charming real-life family togetherness.
Good times end and as Corinne says, "Once life begins to accelerate it goes faster and faster." By the middle of the book the terrible thing that happened to pull them apart has come about. "It's the way families are sometime. A thing goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it and years pass and--still, no one knows how to fix it."
Corinne and Michael's children are now grown up, scattered, and living their "rag-quilt" lives far from home. And then, as life cycles are wont to do, another event brings them back together again.
Oates writes in a rush of spontaneous narrative that tingles every nerve-end in your body. Each of her many characters are soulfully conflicted and beguilingly complicated. It's almost as if she's looking into your own family and revealing the surface and underside of what she sees. Feelings are conveyed that all of us have experienced.
In one way or another perhaps we were all once the Mulvaneys, if not in deed--in thought.
I am proud to give this superb novel my highest recommendations.
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(Jones is a published writer & literary critic)
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