Una de las virtudes del estilo de Joyce Carol Oates en mi opinión es que deja muchos detalles del argumento, y de algunas situaciones a la imaginación del lector. Te presenta los hechos, te da los datos, pero se vuelve ambigua a la hora de explicarlo todo taxativamente, de esta manera, consigue que el lector se comprometa con los personajes y que desarrolle en su imaginación lo que ella te ha dejado intuir. Puedes adorar u odiar a ciertos personajes, sus decisiones, pero realmente consigue que lector participe activa y emocionalmente en el desarrollo de la historia. Al final esta novela no es más que la narración por parte de Joyce Carol de la historia de una familia, la construye y la desconstruye paso a paso para que la conozcamos, sin juzgarlos, pero a través de su infelicidad y de muchos de sus momentos emocionalmente muy fuertes, consigue transmitirnos lo dificil que es sobrevivir a los palos de la vida. I asked one of my friends to recommend a good book to close out the year, and this is what she suggested. And just...wow! This was a superb read. The writing was impeccable and the story was riveting. I’ve always wanted to read something by Joyce Carol Oates, and I’m so glad to be able to say I finally did.

Michael Mulvaney begins drinking heavily, which makes him miss work. He starts spending more time in the working-class bars that he used to frequent before his roofing business prospered and the Mulvaneys became socially prominent. Old friends avoid him and his family, which feeds his resentment. One night, an old acquaintance who runs a seedy inn and tavern where the Mulvaneys used to go when they were a young married couple calls: he tells Corinne that she has to come and get her husband, who has been hurt in a fight. Spending the night with him in one of the inn's rooms, Corinne realizes that her main commitment is to her husband. They say the youngest kid of a family doesn’t remember himself very clearly because he has learned to rely on the memories of others, who are older and thus possess authority. Where his memory conflicts with theirs, it’s discarded as of little worth. What he believes to be his memory is more accurately described as a rag-bin of others’ memories, their overlapping testimonies of things that happened before he was born, mixed in with things that happened after his birth, including him.This is also a novel that can be read on many levels. Certainly it is the story of the deterioration of an American family, but it is also the story of how difficult it is to break the bonds of love once forged. It is also a story of the fragility of self-esteem solely based on how others view us, which, of course, can turn on a dime, with underscoring threads of the fundamental coldness of nature itself and the inevitibility of death. These themes are interwoven with the philosophies of Christianity, Darwinism, and the age of reason that in Oates' skilled hands seem not to compete with each other so much as to cooperate, and perhaps even complement. I am ashamed to be seen reading anything baring the "Oprah's Book Club" stamp, but I must say that I am never truly deeply disappointed by the selections. (Some do manage to achieve classic status.) Until now. (Is this the very reason the club dismantled and lost the cred????)

The Mulvaneys are blessed by all that makes life sweet. But something happens on Valentine’s Day, 1976—an incident that is hushed up in the town and never spoken of in the Mulvaney home—that rends the fabric of their family life…with tragic consequences. Years later, the youngest son attempts to piece together the fragments of the Mulvaneys’ former glory, seeking to uncover and understand the secret violation that brought about the family’s tragic downfall. Al mismo tiempo que valora la familia, también es crítica con todo los aspectos negativos que puede comportar: It was just too much for me to believe the dad's unexplained refusal to have anything to do with his daughter after the rape, and the mom's role in casting the daughter out into the world on dad's behalf, as if the rape was their daughter's fault. I didn't get any indication (despite how much Oates seems to go on and on and on) that the parents believed their daughter was not credible or that she was "asking for" the rape, no matter how illogical such a belief would be. Extraño: que cuando una luz se apaga, inmediatamente después es como si nunca hubiera existido. La oscuridad lo llena todo de nuevo, por completo. As a child, Oates spent a lot of time on her grandmother's farm, which likely inspired the lively, animal-filled farm that the Mulvaneys took care of. We Were the Mulvaneys: Book Summary

Narrative Techniques and Symbolism

The first few chapters of the novel establish the situation, with Judd explaining that he felt left out of the family's brightest moments, the events such as huge parties and visits from interesting friends, that helped define the Mulvaneys as one of the most popular families in the Chautauqua Valley.

I read that last run-on sentence four times before comprehending it. And in the same paragraph (!) we get: Es un alivio no tener que preocuparte por donde estás. Todo ese orgullo que teníamos, en casa, y esa ansiedad. Llevando una especie de...no sé...vida familiar modélica". En cuanto a la traducción, en general me ha parecido correcta, pero… hay cositas, cositas aquí y allá como:

Daddy Mulvaney is eaten up by resentment, and certainly that isn't unrealistic, as the reader watches him become a cancer to the world around him, including to his family. Most men cannot deal with problems that they cannot fix. And, a high school daughter cannot be "fixed" from the harm she has suffered from a rape. When Daddy realizes this, he is consumed with rage at the boy who raped her, at the boy's family, at the law, at the members of his country club, at everyone. Esta afirmación se podría decir que define perfectamente lo que suponía ser un Mulvaney, sobre todo en el primer tercio de la novela, justo hasta que ocurre la tragedia que lo desbarata todo. La familia Mulvaney formada por el padre y la madre, Mike y Corinne, y por sus cuatro hijos, viviendo en una granja idílica rodeados de animales, caballos, perros, gatos y por una naturaleza medio salvaje (los ciervos son un simbolo asociados con la brevedad del momento que aparecen en dos momentos cruciales de la novela), parecían ser el paradigma del sueño americano. Mike Mulvaney, un hombre hecho a sí mismo, exitoso empresario, y Corinne su siempre optimista esposa, un espiritú libre y ferviente creyente, construyen una especie de paraíso en la tierra en High Point Farm, una granja que es un lugar no solo idílico, sino perfecto para que crezcan unos niños. Son una familia respetada, sus hijos son populares y se podría considerar que nada sería capaz de desbaratar este paradigma de felicidad.

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year. Oates is working on a large canvas here. There are several biblical and mythical allusions; and much of the book has the inexorable feel of a Greek Tragedy. The idea of Darwinian evolution is also a big theme. And the book can also be read, quite convincingly, as one of those Death of the American Dream novels. When institutions fail people, you're left with the family unit. The book mostly concerns the subtle interworkings of a large family, from the oft-repeated anecdotes that capture a family member’s character to its big secrets. Nuestras vidas quedan definidas por los antojos, caprichos, crueldades de otros. Esa telaraña genética, los lazos de sangre. Era la más antigua maldición, más antigua que Dios. ‘¿Me aman?, ¿me quieren? ¿Quién me querrá, si no lo hacen mis padres?’. During these mad dashes to the wall phone in the kitchen she hadn’t time to fall but with fantastical grace and dexterity wrenched herself upright in midfall and continued running (dogs whimpering, yapping hysterically in her wake, cats scattering wide-eyed and plume-tailed) before the telephone ceased its querulous ringing – though frequently she was greeted with nothing more than a derisive dial tone, in any case.I have read others say that Oates spends too much time on minutae, the definition of which is certainly in the eye of the beholder, that she should have gotten on with the story. I disagree. Every story that she tells, every detail that she describes about High Point Farm, the animals, the smells, is essential to a full understanding of the story that follows. Reading this to pass the time as the bus rolled along, I found myself in the middle of the world she so vividly describes, and less concerned that she was wasting my precious time. It was also interesting how the whole family, the parents especially, believed their own hype of being this picture perfect unit, the embodiment of the American dream, whereas to this reader they didn’t seem that special to begin with, therefore their downfall wasn’t as surprising as it was to them. When the reality started contradicting their own image they built in their heads, well, that’s too bad for reality. We never actually see the family through any outsider’s eyes, so we have no idea if their opinion of themselves is shared by their neighbours or if it’s just some group delusion.