A review by thetenaciousbookworm
We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

3.0

I really struggled with this one. It started out really strong and then halfway through it dragged on and on, with no real direction to the plot. The Mulvaney daughter is exiled from her family and everything she's known because her father can't deal with the fact that his daughter was date raped. Yet we never really understand his process or hers, or how anyone in this family feels about anything. I think this book had a great opportunity to really explore the nuances of how families deal with and process when a loved one is assaulted and brutalized, but instead the characters were lost in this grandiose notion and collective identity of 'The Mulvaneys'. But even that is vague and expressed at the end of the book when the narrator is confused by the statement that they all look like such Mulvaneys? What does it even mean to be a Mulvaney, much less an individual within the Mulvaney family? Character development was weak and I was underwhelmed by the ending of the story. The father dies from drinking himself to death and the book ends with the family joyfully reunited at a July 4th barbecue. The central characters are alienated from their own stories by a narrator who, to no fault of his own, knows nothing about their journeys and hardships. I'm aware that these are intentional decisions by the author, but I had a really hard time with this book. I hated the characters because I didn't get to know them well enough.