We Were the Mulvaneys

Oates's critically acclaimed 26th novel concerns forty years in the lives of the Mulvaney family, whose idyllic, God-fearing life in rural New England begins to unravel after the rape of their teenaged daughter. The story of how knee-jerk WASP values fare against the trials of modern life consumes these heart-tugging pages. Narrator Scott Shina has a suitably ingenuous, bucolic tone, though of the South rather than the Northeast. He gives a respectable delivery of the crust of his text, but misses the meat of it. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

June 4, 2001
In a tale told primarily from the point of view of the youngest boy, Judd, listeners learn how each of the Mulvaneys struggles with 16-year-old Marianne's date rape and her father's fierce reaction to it—Mike Mulvaney bans his daughter from the house, ostensibly because she will not name her rapist. In her 26th novel, Oates once again shows her prowess as mistress of the macabre. The best scenes are not early on when we're introduced to the lovely, successful Mulvaneys, their smart and charming children, and their middle-class American milieu. They are not in the rebuilding of individual lives in the wake of the father's disintegration and death. Nor are they toward the end, when the Mulvaneys reunite as an almost-functional, though much-changed family. It is the flashbacks of Marianne's date rape and especially brother Patrick's plotting and executing his vigilante justice that carry listeners from sentence to sentence throughout Adams's utterly convincing reading. Based on the Penguin hardcover.

Before date rape was an acknowledged occurrence, in the bad old '70s, when sexual intercourse between acquaintances was considered consensual, an innocent Christian teenager sufferes that fate after a prom. The long-term effects upon Maryann Mulvaney prove only slightly more severe than upon every member of her loving family. J. Todd Adams's familiarity of tone immediately brings the listener into a family confidence, as he convincingly assumes the role of Maryann's young brother, Judd. His characterizations of parents and siblings are portrayed in the way of just such a brother telling a family story. Fitting Irish instrumentals separate chapters. Adams's mispronunciation of real place names is the only flaw in a touching and compelling performance. R.P.L. 2002 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine