We Were the Mulvaneys

Product Information

We Were the Mulvaneys was available as of 2006 in an abridged form on audio cassette and CD, read by J. The book's epilogue, set some years later, might be seen as the author's way of pasting a happy ending onto an unhappy story, but it actually is necessary for telling readers the results of the family's struggles.

Though the novel does not follow his life for many years, Oates makes clear in the end that Patrick has been able to find peace chiefly because he realizes that revenge cannot give him peace. In this case, though, readers do not get a clear picture of the Mulvaney group persona because all of the facts are filtered through the consciousness of Judd, who tends to idealize the family, projecting onto it a fading greatness that may not have existed after all.Her penchant for the occasional run-on sentence gives me uneasy flashbacks to reading Absalom, Absalom! After Patrick drives into town for her and brings her back in a snowstorm, she goes to her room then takes a bath, not telling her family what happened after the dance: a senior boy, Zack Lundt, got her drunk and raped her. It is a poignant moment, one that gives some closure to some family members, but it still leaves unanswered questions: Patrick is still missing after having abducted a man at gunpoint years earlier, and Marianne's relationship with Dr.

He becomes so bitter that he sabotages his graduation, at which he is speaking as valedictorian, with a stink bomb in the air ducts.He kidnaps at gunpoint the man he considers his enemy and takes him to a deserted bog, but at the last minute he realizes that killing him will not make life better for the Mulvaneys. The story of the destruction of the Mulvaney family centers on the rape of seventeen-year-old Marianne.