We Were the Mulvaneys works not simply because of its meticulous details and gestures.... What keeps us coming back to Oates Country is something stronger and spookier: her uncanny gift of making the page a window, with something on the other side that we'd swear was life itself. - The New York Times Book Review
Everyone knows the Mulvaneys: Dad the successful businessman, Mike the football star, Marianne the cheerleader, Patrick the brain, Judd the runt, and Mom dedicated to running the family.
But after what sometime narrator Judd calls the events of Valentine's Day 1976, this ideal family falls apart and is not reunited until 1993. Oates's 26th novel explores this disintegration with an eye to the nature of changing relationships and recovering from the fractures that occur.
Through vivid imagery of a calm upstate New York landscape that any moment can be transformed by a blinding blizzard into a near-death experience, Oates demonstrates how faith and hope can help us endure.
At another level, the process of becoming the Mulvaneys again investigates the philosophical and spiritual aspects of a family's survival and restoration.
Joyce Carol Oates is one of America's most prolific and well loved authors. To find out more about her, click the link below
http://www.usfca.edu/jco/biography/
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