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Title: A Family Undone
Review: Denial and dysfunction tears apart an American family in Joyce Caorol Oates' We Were the Mulvaneys. Set in 1970's upstate New York, the tale centers around the Mulvaneys - a family who is living the American dream of wealth and prominence on their own little slice of heaven, High Point Farm. Using her considerable gift for visceral prose, Oates paints a painful portrait of the fall of the Mulvaneys after the rape and subsequent exile of their "perfect" daughter. Oates' understanding potrayal of violence and its depersonalizing effects compels the reader to stay with the Mulvaneys -to empathize with their defects and come to a place of forgiveness with the entire clan. This is Oates at her best: holding a mirror up to show our strengths and vulnerablilities.
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