TW: Rape and men being precious little babies.
I really hated this book by Joyce Carol Oates.
It’s one of those books where, the more I think about it, the more I dislike it.
It was an impulse borrow from my local library when I was between ebooks and looking for something to read when my dog decides to plop down in a park in the middle of our walks, or on the train when I don’t have a purse big enough to fit a physical book.
I had read one other book by Oates before, and while it wasn’t my favorite, I did like it. Something in the description for this book said it’s different from Oates’s other works, which intrigued me enough to check it out.
What drew me to the book was a description that made it sound like the Mulvaneys had it all — a wealthy family that lost all their wealth, as told by the youngest of the Mulvaney siblings who is looking back as an adult on what happened to bring about the “downfall” of his family.
Except they weren’t all that wealthy. They were probably upper-middle class, but it’s not like we’re talking about the millionaires here.
It took forever for Oates to reveal what “It” was, and when she finally revealed it, I thought that couldn’t possibly be all there was to it.
It was. The whole book centers around the narrator’s older sister getting raped as a teenager.
Prior to “It,” the Mulvaneys appear to be a perfectly happy family. Michael owns his own business and makes enough money that his wife, Corinne, doesn’t have to work. Instead she collects antiques and fixes them up to be resold. The problem is she only buys pieces she falls in love with, and then she can’t bear to part with them, so she’s really just a hoarder.
They live on a farm that appears to exist more to amuse them than to provide any food or income. I don’t think there’s even a mention of harvesting chicken eggs. Instead, each of the four children has their own horse they ride and take care of, and they have a bunch of dogs wandering around the farm, both inside and outside of the house.
It’s idyllic and the perfect setting for something to go wrong.
I just hated that the whole book revolved around this poor girl getting raped and then abandoned by her family. Not because they think she brought shame to the family, but because they supposedly love her so much they can’t bear to look at her and be reminded of how such an awful thing could happen to their precious baby girl. So they send her off to live with a distant relative she had never met before.
I almost think it would be better if they had slut shamed her. At least then they wouldn’t have been claiming to love her while doing the worst possible thing they could to her immediately after she experienced one of the worst possible things that could happen to anyone. These people are the worst.
I don’t know if I’m more angry with Michael or Corinne. Michael becomes so obsessed with his inability to protect or get justice for his daughter that he becomes a useless drunk who neglects his business until it vanishes. They have to sell the farm and move into a tiny house in town. He also becomes physically abusive, even though he had shown no hint of being abusive prior to this.
Oates really should have done her research so she could understand that alcohol doesn’t make people abusive. People who beat their spouses and children are just as likely to do it when they’re sober as when they’re drunk.
I can’t believe all these awful things happen to Marianne, yet somehow Michael is the one who can’t deal. Are you kidding me?
And then Corinne goes along with it!
What kind of a mother do you have to be to send your own daughter away at a time like that?
And then she keeps promising to visit Marianne or to bring Marianne home to visit, only to yank that hope away at the last minute and making it sound like it was never possible. That’s just cruel.
And yet Marianne never gets angry. Ever.
She doesn’t get mad at her rapist. She doesn’t get mad at her family for rejecting her when she needed them most. We literally never see her get angry at anyone ever.
The same goes for Corinne. She should be furious with her husband, especially when he starts beating her and Judd (the youngest of the kids and also the narrator,) but she’s always coming up with some excuse for his worst behavior.
It’s not until Michael finally dies of alcoholism that the family can come back together and live happily ever after, which, again, it surprises me that Marianne was willing to let those people back into her life after what they did to her. Her mom calls her when Michael is on his deathbed and says her father finally wants to see her and Marianne comes running as though she has never been so furious with him for what he did that she vowed never to see him again.
Nope. Sweet Marianne never gets angry at anyone.
*barf*