A bit disappointed. This was my first JCO read, and I expected more, ESPECIALLY not the Hallmark ending. She started out strong with character development and a good setting but things went south toward the end. She could have used a stricter editor. The book was too long. ( )

It's the perfect title for this novel. There's a pain of loss in it, and that captures the novel's dominant sentiment. It was both refreshing and heartbreaking to read about the Mulvaney family, a family that loves to laugh, the kind of family you'd like to have as your own. Heartbreaking for the tragedy that befalls them and unearths their fragility, their inexperience at grappling with something on this scale, and what it does to them.

It's a story about mistakenly believing normality can be restored without effort, about how religion both heals and harms, about powerlessness and blame and responsibility. Most importantly, this novel (set in 1976) brilliantly expresses the argument for everything we are fighting to have happen today when these circumstances arise, and why we have fought for it. The primary counterargument at the time would have been, what happens to the Mulvaneys would have happened to the whole town. But a burden shared among many eases the burden for all, and pulling together is not the same as pulling apart. That goes for families, too. ( )

This was my first book by the author Joyce Carol Oates, and while the story was good and the writing was good, the book is entirely too long with way to much detail. If this had been 150 pages less, the book would have been 5 stars.
The story is about the disintegration of A family- the Mulvaney’s- mostly as a result of a date rape of the daughter on the daughter.
The Mulvaney’s unfortunately are not the most likable family even though they thing they are. The only character you have any sympathy for is the daughter but because the parents are such a mess, she is a disaster until the end of the book.
The mother is flighty and puts everything “in gods hands”
Dad turns into a distant mean raving alcoholic,
And the two oldest sons completely disappear from from the family.
Not a cheery story. ( )

A delightful immersion. ( )

A delightful immersion. ( )