Oates inscribes her novel "for my 'Mulvaneys,'" not to signal it as autobiographical—if it has substantial autobiographical elements, these have not been made public—but to connect it to the world of upstate New York that she grew up in and has used in works such as Marya: A Life (1986; see separate entry), You Must Remember This (1987; see separate entry), and Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990; see separate entry). Although it is set more recently than the 1950s of these novels, We Were the Mulvaneys portrays the same kind of social class divisions and the same kind of teen-age world where girls strive to be popular and boys prove their manhood through sex. Where the highly intelligent female characters in Marya and Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart move outside of the community...