We Were Liars

We Were Liars is a 2014 young-adult novel by E. Lockhart. The novel itself has received critical acclaim and won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Young Adult Fiction.^[1] It was also listed as an ALA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults for 2015.^[2]

We Were Liars focuses on the theme of self-acceptance, family morals, and the possibly-deadly consequences of one's mistakes. It is centered on a wealthy family that spends every summer on their private island. However, not every summer is the same - when something happens to Cadence during the summer of her fifteenth year, the four "Liars" (Cadence, Johnny, Gat and Mirren) re-emerge two years later to prompt Cadence to remember the incident.

Plot

The book begins with a story told by Cadence Sinclair who is the protagonist of "We Were Liars". She gives an insight into her life and her summers before Summer Fifteen that she spent on a private island, owned by her grandparents and tells how she got to know an Indian boy named Gat and how she fell deeply in love with him.

Then, one summer, at the age of fifteen ("Summer Fifteen") they grow even closer and even almost start a relationship - but then an accident happens and Cadence is seriously injured. She suffers migraine since then and is not able to remember much of Summer Fifteen except of her accident. Although she knows, something bad must have happened (because her mother refuses to tell her anything), she lives on, in pain and an almost entirely different person than she used to be, but she lives.

In Summer Seventeen, Cadence and her Mum travel back to the island in Massachusetts after two years (Cadence travelled to Europe with her father and therefore was not able to spent her holidays on the island in Summer Sixteen) and now the storytelling ends and they land in present times.

Now Cadence tries to find out about everything that happened two years ago and meets all of her "Liars" again, falls deeper in love with Gat, just like he falls in love with her. No one wants to tell her anything, because the doctors want her to remember by her own power and so Cadence tries to remember everything desperately. Piece by piece the memories eventually come back. She learns that in Summer Fifteen her mother and her aunts fought all the time about the heritage and how annoying the Liars got of all those things that slowly caused a big gap in their family. And then the Liars do something that Cadence deeply regrets when she finds out at the end of the book. A shocking ending that no one expects.

Pre-publication

E. Lockhart wrote We Were Liars with knowledge of the ending. She was particularly inspired by the twist endings in Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, because the first twist still kept the reader interested, as well as Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me which contained a lot of small details that fell into place at the end.^[3] The novel is written in five acts, though pieces of each were rearranged, particularly the middle three.^[3] Lockhart wrote the novel on the writing software Scrivener which made it easy to rearrange segments of text.^[4] She changed the structure of the ending shortly before the advance reader copy, based on suggestions from young adult author John Green.^[4]

As a child, Lockhart was "captivated" by fairy tale collections her mother had and incorporated a fairy tale feel to We Were Liars; she stated, "Fairy tales have been a preoccupation of mine for a very long time, and for a long time I wanted to write a contemporary story with a fairy-tale structure so I could unpack some of what I had spent so much time thinking about."^[5] The relationship between the Liars was inspired by Lockhart's "fantasy" of having close friends growing up, but also an attempt to "unpack" potential consequences of the bond.^[3] The character of Gat, who is part of the Liars but also an outsider to the family, was drawn from Lockhart's experience as a scholarship student at private schools, as well as Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights.^[3] Lockhart also stated that some individuals close to her experience migraines and she was interested in exploring how pain affects one's personality and perception of the world.^[3]

The publisher hoped that the novel would have a large crossover appeal to adult readers, because it had "teens who must interact with imperfect adults and imperfect adults who are important to the entire dynamic of the plot."^[5] To promote We Were Liars without giving too much of the plot away, a blog on Tumblr was created, focusing on the aesthetic of the Sinclair's island with quotes from the book.^[6] The promotional material urged readers to "just lie" if they were asked about the ending.^[6]

Themes

Los Angeles Times writer Amy Benfer described that thematically, We Were Liars was "a classic story of decaying aristocracy and the way that privilege can often hamstring more than help."^[7]

Release and reception

We Were Liars debuted at #6 on the New York Times Bestseller List in the young adult category.^[8] From June 1 to September 7, it spent 13 weeks on the top ten.^[9] Goodreads determined that it was the most-searched standalone title of 2014 on the website, leading them to declare it a possibility for the year's "it" book.^[10] Bustle affirmed this declaration, believing that the novel was "compulsively readable," had a "meaningful" plot, and was frequently talked about.^[11]

We Were Liars received mostly positiver reviews from critics. Kirkus Reviews awarded We Were Liars a starred review, stating that it was "riveting, brutal and beautifully told." The review particularly praised Lockhart's humanizing of the Sinclairs.^[12] Publishers Weekly also wrote a starred review, referring to Lockhart's depiction of the family as "astute."^[13] School Library Journal reviewer Karyn Silverman said that Cadence's voice was the highlight of the novel, but also praised the "smart" writing in regards to plotting and complex characters.^[14] The publication also listed it among their "Best Books of 2014."^[15] Katrina Hedeen of The Horn Book Magazine also gave a starred review, describing it as an "intriguing, atmospheric story" with a "taut psychological mystery" and unexpected twist.^[16] The Wall Street Journal also gave a positive review, noting the crossover appeal to adults and praising Cadence as an unreliable narrator.^[17]

Josh Lacey of The Guardian described the novel as "cunning" and "clever", calling the twist ending "nastier and more shocking than anything I had imagined."^[18] The Daily Telegraph's Martin Chilton gave the book four out of five stars, calling it "a mysterious and addictive treat" with a twist that is "dramatic and severe."^[19] Meg Rosoff, writing for The New York Times, felt that the execution "fell oddly flat"; she enjoyed the "snappy characterizations" of the privileged family, but felt that overall the novel was not able to fully delve into the personalities of the characters. In regards to the ending, however, she wrote that "Lockhart just about manages to pull it off, thanks to the freshness of the writing and the razor-sharp metaphor amnesia provides for the Sinclair family habit of denial."^[20]

We Were Liars was listed among the best young adult books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews,^[21] Publishers Weekly,^[22] School Library Journal,^[15] and The Wall Street Journal.^[23] It also made the list of ALA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults for 2015,^[2] and was the only young adult novel listed in Amazon's Best 20 Books of the Year.^[24] It was also a finalist in the book of the year category for the Teen Choice Book Awards,^[25] and won the Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult Fiction.^[1]

References