I have been a fan of Joyce Carol Oates for more than five years. It all began when a childhood best friend asked me to help him out with a high school book report on one of Oates' novels. "I can't get past the first five pages," he complained.
He insisted, though, that it seemed like "my kind of book." We had always had different tastes when it came to novels - as in, I liked to read them and he didn't - so I was immediately intrigued and decided to give my friend a helping hand. Oates has since become one of my favorite authors.
And I'm not the only one devouring Oates' novels these days - Oprah Winfrey herself has recently jumped on the bandwagon, making We Were the Mulvaneys the latest novel in the Oprah's Book Club series. Readers across the country are buying their own copies of this 1996 novel and discovering what I have known for years: that Joyce Carol Oates is by far one of the best contemporary American writers.
Told from the perspective of the youngest of the four grown Mulvaney children, We Were the Mulvaneys is a novel that explores the unraveling of a seemingly perfect family. When we first meet the Mulvaneys, they are living happily at High Point Farm in New York's rural Chatauqua Valley. Judd, our guide through the tumult of the Mulvaney family history, speaks fondly of his childhood. Every family member has at least two affectionate nicknames (like "Ranger," "Curly," or "Buttons"), and the household is home to a variety of stray cats and dogs in addition to the farm animals they maintain. The Mulvaneys are the type of family that sits down for meals together and takes weekend trips into town.
Everything changes on Valentine's Day in 1976. We are immediately alerted to the existence of a deep, dark secret that lies at the root of the family's undoing. We don't, however, actually learn what the secret is until we're well over 100 pages into the novel. And that's okay - Oates manages to make these pages suspenseful without torturing us, reminding us every now and then that the secret exists, but reassuring us she will eventually let us in on it, too. Once she does, the Mulvaney family we have grown to love and admire in the early chapters of the novel begins to fall apart.
We Were the Mulvaneys is a novel that captures all of Oates' talents as a writer, most notably her ability to take a handful of characters and infuse each of them with an instantaneously endearing personality. It takes her five pages to convince us that the Mulvaneys could very easily be our neighbors, if not perhaps our own relatives. Their flaws and idiosyncrasies are familiar and real - it won't take you long to realize this is no sitcom family we're talking about. When the family begins to disintegrate, you'll want to ask Corrine, the Mulvaney mom, if there's anything you can do to help. When the town of Mt. Ephraim turns against the once respected Mulvaney family, you'll want to speak out against them. Once you become entangled in the Mulvaney world, it will a lot of convincing to remind you this is indeed a work of fiction.
Oates is also a master of language with an unmistakable gift for description. Whether she's writing about Alder Creek behind High Point Farm or the color of Corrine's hair, it's as though she's actually there to witness it herself. She taps into your imagination with her words - you can see the road that leads from the town to the farm and almost taste Sunday night's casserole. As a result, We Were the Mulvaneys is an incredibly vivid book. Although the language ventures close to being too dense, Oates succeeds nonetheless in creating an atmosphere that is uniquely "Mulvaney."
I won't lie to you - Joyce Carol Oates can be difficult to read if you don't prepare yourself beforehand. We Were the Mulvaneys is far from a quick read. At around 450 pages, it's a novel that demands a lot of your attention, not only because of its complexity but also because it unexpectedly taps into your emotions. If you've never read Oates before, her language may seem superfluous at first. Give it a chapter or two, and you will find yourself falling into the hypnotizing rhythm of the novel. Like her previous novels, We Were the Mulvaneys moves at a pace that can only be described as uniquely "Oates" - once you get going, though, I promise you won't be able to stop.
