We Were The Mulvaney's by Joyce Carol Oates

“Members of a family who've lived together in the heated intensity of family life scarcely know one another. Life is too head on, too close up. That was the paradox. …exactly the opposite of what you'd expect. For of course you never give such relationships a thought living them…”

I have to admit that I’d never read anything by Joyce Carol Oates. She is one of our most prolific novelists and yet our paths have not crossed. I stumbled upon this backlist gold while searching for an audiobook for my trip to Maine. It is a 1997 release, was an Oprah Bookclub pick, and is without a doubt one of the darkest, most intense family dramas I've ever read.

Set in upstate New York on a generational family farm and narrated by the youngest son of four siblings, this story spans 25 years of the Mulvaney family history and it's undoing after a tragic incident involving their only daughter.

This book is full of sadness and it also felt incredibly believable, despite having some of the worst characters I've ever encountered between the pages of a novel. The patriarch, Michael Mulvaney, is a horrible man and his actions in the wake of what happens to his daughter are unforgivable. However the mother's acceptance of his actions are almost harder to process and I despised her as a character as well I don't often feel this level of anger while reading but boy, Oates can dig in. And Oates tries to tie things up in a bit of a bow at the end, but I wasn't buying it. Watching the siblings try to make sense of the decisions their parents make in the fallout from their sister's tragedy was absolutely heartbreaking. This is the story of a family's fall from grace with themes both literary and biblical - from the American dream to forgiveness and sin.

The audio presentation is stellar and I think it added to my processing of a long, tough read. My reactions to the characters behavior is proof positive that Oates is a skilled writer and I am off to seek out her other books because I found this both disturbing and compelling. I don't need to like my characters, I just need to want to keep reading.