We Were the Mulvaneys
By Joyce Carol Oates
Oprah Book Club® Selection #41, January 2001
Editorial Review:
A happy family, the Mulvaneys. After decades of marriage, Mom and Dad are still in love–and the proud parents of a brood of youngsters that includes a star athlete, a class valedictorian, and a popular cheerleader. Home is an idyllic place called High Point Farm. And the bonds of attachment within this all-American clan do seem both deep and unconditional: “Mom paused again, drawing in her breath sharply, her eyes suffused with a special lustre, gazing upon her family one by one, with what crazy unbounded love she gazed upon us, and at such a moment my heart would contract as if this woman who was my mother had slipped her fingers inside my rib cage to contain it, as you might hold a wild, thrashing bird to comfort it.”
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