JOYCE CAROL OATES
We Were the Mulvaneys
A NOVEL
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This edition published by Harper Perennial 2008
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2001
Copyright © The Ontario Review, Inc. 1996
The quoted passage on page 177 is taken from Ludwig von Bertalanffy,
Problems of Life: An Evaluation of Modern Biological and Scientific Thought (Pitman Publishing, Ltd, London, 1952), page 103
PS Section copyright © Sarah O’Reilly 2008, except ‘What is a Family except Memories?’ by Joyce Carol Oates © The Ontario Review, Inc. 2008 PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
Joyce Carol Oates asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007268399
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007502134 Version: 2017-04-20
From the reviews of We Were the Mulvaneys:
‘Oates’s finest … a major achievement’
Chicago Tribune
‘We Were the Mulvaneys works not simply because of its meticulous details and gestures … What keeps us coming back to Oates Country is something stronger and spookier: her uncanny gift of making the page a window, with something on the other side that we’d swear was life itself’
DAVID GATES, New York Times
‘This is a book that will break your heart, heal it, then break it again every time you think about it’
Los Angeles Times
‘Novelists such as Updike, Roth, Wolfe and Mailer slug it out for the title of the Great American Novelist. But maybe they’re wrong. Maybe, just maybe, the Great American Novelist is a woman’
Herald
‘A brilliantly detailed and varied picture of family life and a succession of dramatic set pieces … These are people we recognise, and she makes us care deeply about them’
Kirkus
for my “Mulvaneys” …
EPIGRAPH
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged.Missing me one place search another,I stop some where waiting for you.
from Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
CONTENTS