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Title: A Modern-Day Reprise of Dreiser
Review: This book is hauntingly familiar to Dreiser's "An American Tragedy." Four children, their parents and a marriage are all sacrificed on the pyre of the parents' self-perceived image in the community and Joyce Carol Oates is an author who is powerful enough to make us feel their initial disbelief and subsequent pain following "the incident." I found Michael Sr. to be the most dislikable character because he used the rape of his daughter to justify his own very despicable behavior when he was needed the most and the daughter to be the character most deserving of our compassion. This is a book that will make its readers take a good, hard look at the depth of their own meaningful relationships to see if they would survive a devestation of the magnitude suffered by the Mulvaneys. This book is about people who prefer to maintain appearances at all cost and the cost is, indeed, very dear.
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