I finished reading We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates the other day. This was another story about a dysfunctional family but with a difference. You didn't see the dysfunction until something really bad happened to one of the family members. Again, I don't want to spoil it. The Mulvaneys seemed to be one of those close knit, well-to-do, very happy and successful families people secretly envy. Then comes this tragedy...and the family just totally falls apart. Why? If they were so happy and close knit it shouldn't have happened, should it? Well, now we see that the communication doesn't seem to be there and unconditional love doesn't seem to be quite there. The victim in the family is totally ostracized and that bugged me the most about the story. How can you treat an innocent member of the family like that? Joyce Carol Oates is not easy to read--I found myself either re-reading or just skipping stuff entirely. Supposedly the story will hurt and heal, well, I didn't feel any healing. I guess I was just too ticked off at the "parental units". I just didn't enjoy it that much after that certain breaking point. Oh well...

Arrived in the mail today. Thank you!!! Adding to Mt TBR (which honestly isn't all that insurmountable these days ).

I really enjoyed this book. The reading was a bit difficult at times. Mostly due to the author's frequent and extensive use of commas and dashes to create very long elaborate sentences. Sometimes by the time I got the end of the sentence I had lost all track of what the subject was in the first place. But as to the story itself, it was a good read. I didn't particularly *like* all the characters (some I downright disliked) but each was well developed and believable. Near the end the character development seemed to just sort of stop... Marianne's character for instance... A lot of time passed and some of the story line was resolved almost as an afterthought, in past tense. On the other hand, I was ready for the story to come to an end. Overall, a very good book that I could recommend to others.

Available at the Miller Family Reunion

RELEASE NOTES:

Released at the Miller Family Reunion.