We Were the Mullvaneys (2002)

I'm not normally a big fan of the "family novel". As a younger version of myself, I saw my share of TV-movies about the "perfect" family that somehow comes apart and then the alienated family members learn to put away past grievances and pain and come together again and yadda-yadda-yadda. If you looked at a synopsis of this book it might seem to fit that category. But Ms. Oates gifts as a writer are remarkable-- she can put you right into the consciousness of a character and make him or her feel as if you grew up with them, or at least that they lived in your neighborhood when you were an impressionable child.

The novel is told partly from the perspective of the youngest Mullvaney, Judd, and also in the third person. This blend of perspective is, at its best, seamless.

The novel is a hybrid between the tortured family dynamic of Cal and Aron Trask, among others, in John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" and the wry sensibility of a fine John Cheever short story ("The Swimmer", "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill", "Just Tell Me who It Was) about the agonizing descent of people who are only clinging to the threads of their worn-out past.

The novel is set in a rural part of upstate New York. A local roofing contractor (Mike Mullvaney) and his wife and four teenagers are living in The Great American Comfort Zone, at least on the surface. The rape of the only daughter, Marianne, at a high school Valentine's day after-party by a school jock, sets into motion a chain of events that drives all the kids (the tough but charismatic Mike, Jr, the intellectual Patrick, Marianne, and Judd) out of their home. Mike Mullvaney can not deal with what happened to his daughter and how everyone--including the victim herself--will not kow-tow to his standard of justice. His decline into rash and destructive behavior is the catalyst for the disillusion of the family at High Point Farm. The mother, Corinne, is the rock of the family but she also is strangely passive in dealing with the father's decision to banish the daughter to her elderly aunt. This is the weakest point of the novel, this strange inadequacy of Corinne at a crucial moment. I found the mother most frustrating. But perhaps her acquiescence, while uncharacteristic, is not implausible.

As in a Greek tragedy, the survivors of the losses and abominations--many self-inflicted, come together at the end and salvage their past by putting the worst of it behind them. It is an important human survival trait to, as Orson Welles put it, "make the past behave".

The limits of personal vengeance are explore as well here as you might find in a tragedy, although, unlike Aeschylus' "The Oresteia" trilogy, there are no gods to turn to for judgment or furies to play havoc with the human characters. Free will reigns. Like most modern novels, the very idea of the Divine is not a given, and the source of strength for some is a bitter illusion for others. Oates makes no absolute judgments herself on these matters; only offering a modicum of hope that life is not as hopeless or as assured as many wish it to be.

This is the first Joyce Carol Oates novel I've read and I was not disappointed.

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