Oates’s reputation had always been precarious, marred by a critical suspicion of her copiousness and of her bestseller-adjacent tastes and interests. While her stories often seem raw, the extended enterprise of a novel affords her adequate space to filter emotional dilemmas through action and consequence. Because Zach is a popular member of the football team, what he has done does not reflect badly on him. As their social status dwindles due to social prejudice, fear, shame, and given Michael's quick descent into alcoholism, the members of the family find that they have to face the world as individuals, not as representatives of a group. The happy people that are reintroduced to the readers in the book's epilogue are happy because they are individuals and are in control of their own lives.

Mulvaney's first significant role was as Elder White [2] in the musical The Book of Mormon [7] [8] following her graduation from college. When Judd says, "For a long time you envied us, then you pitied us," and "For a long time you admired us, then you thought, Good! While there’s the expected deaths of animals on the farm, Oates brusquely lists the demises of the Mulvaneys’ remaining cats in a particularly cruel paragraph or two. Patrick, Marianne, and Corinne stand out, with the most distinctive personalities–Patrick, a creature of logic and science, struggles to define himself as something other than a Mulvaney. Whittaker West, a veterinarian whose dedication had earned his hospital and animal shelter an excellent nationwide reputation.After Marianne has risen in rank to become his valuable assistant, and rumors have spread through the co-op that she might be involved with Hewie Miner, Abelove confesses to Marianne that he is in love with her and wants to marry her. In later life, she finds herself unable to deal with emotional attachments or responsibilities: when Abelove, whom she has had a crush on, declares his love and asks her to marry him, she runs away from the co-op without telling him, and when Penelope Hagström offers to promote her to an executive position in her charitable organization, Marianne again runs off without a word. It is 1978, and she has left the home of the distant cousin to attend Kilburn State College, where she attends class infrequently. A shy boy from the co-op named Hewie Miner offers to drive her across the state to the town where Corinne was raised.

We Were the Mulvaneys concerns the destruction and reconstruction of an American family, starting with the children in high school and ending with the eldest child pushing forty. That copy of We Were the Mulvaneys went home with someone else, but I’ve always been meaning to read it. Interview a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and find out what that person thinks of Michael's behavior, as you present it. Judd becomes an agile, broadly empathetic storyteller, entering the minds of his parents and siblings, sometimes even referring to himself in the third person.He hires lawyers to determine who he can sue for redress over his grievances, forcing him to take out thousands of dollars in loans to pay them. While she was teaching at the University of Detroit, one of her short stories was published in the annual Best American Short Stories anthology, reinforcing her commitment to writing. In real life, the chances of such a spontaneous outbreak of contentment would be unlikely, and Oates's way of handling their changes in fortune outside the book's narrative only serves to make readers suspicious.

As a response to trauma and loss, alcohol is a self-medicating insulation in the present moment serving as a barrier to unbearable pain.She employs social theory, theology and science to ask whether changes within the family are emblematic of evolution within the species. A scene where a young Judd is almost paralyzed by the passing of time as marked by his heartbeat particularly hit home for me. For one thing, Michael and Corinne, well-meaning as they are, are just not family-oriented people at heart. In the move beyond the Name of the Father in We Were the Mulvaneys, as well as other narratives, we read social change. Oates eloquently employs daily details, cataloguing Corinne's antiques, mapping Patrick's Ithaca jogging route, calculating the number of paint gallons required to spruce up High Point Farm.