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A review by amandagstevens
We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
Did not finish book. Stopped at 3%.
Yes, I would normally give a book more time to hook me (I try to give 10% or 50 pages, depending on the length), but there's no reason to do so this time. I can't abide the profusion of italics and exclamation points and pointless run-on sentences. I can't abide the cutesy voice of Judd, the 30-year-old baby of the family, gushing descriptions of his family without giving me any clue as to his own personality (except that he's a gusher). And I can already tell Judd is going to mess with me, withhold things, bait me and then not tell me The Big Secret. For 450 pages? No. Can't do it.
Oh, and this:
Everything recorded here happened and it's my task to suggest how, and why; why what might seem to be implausible or inexplicable at a distance--a beloved child's banishment by a loving father, like something in a Grimm fairy tale--isn't implausible or inexplicable from within. I will include as many "facts" as I can assemble; and the rest is conjecture, imagined but not invented. Much is based upon memory and conversations with family members about things I had not experienced firsthand nor could possibly know except in the way of the heart.
So the author here is warning me that 1.) The story is implausible, but the narrator will try to make me believe I missed something if I conclude that the story is implausible; 2.) The narrator will be unreliable in other ways as well; 3.) The author fully intends to break point-of-view rules.
I'm okay with a well-done unreliable narrator, but one that's badly done (purely to manipulate the reader) is one of my literary pet peeves, so ... Overall, plenty of reasons for an enthusiastic pass on this one.
Oh, and this:
Everything recorded here happened and it's my task to suggest how, and why; why what might seem to be implausible or inexplicable at a distance--a beloved child's banishment by a loving father, like something in a Grimm fairy tale--isn't implausible or inexplicable from within. I will include as many "facts" as I can assemble; and the rest is conjecture, imagined but not invented. Much is based upon memory and conversations with family members about things I had not experienced firsthand nor could possibly know except in the way of the heart.
So the author here is warning me that 1.) The story is implausible, but the narrator will try to make me believe I missed something if I conclude that the story is implausible; 2.) The narrator will be unreliable in other ways as well; 3.) The author fully intends to break point-of-view rules.
I'm okay with a well-done unreliable narrator, but one that's badly done (purely to manipulate the reader) is one of my literary pet peeves, so ... Overall, plenty of reasons for an enthusiastic pass on this one.