We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

We Were Liars follows the story of a wealthy but broken family, known as the Sinclairs. Candance, our narrator, is the eldest grandchild of the Sinclairs. 

“The Sinclairs are athletic, tall and handsome. We are old-money Democrats. Our smiles are wide, our chins square, and our tennis serves aggressive.”  - E. Lockhart

Despite their esteemed reputation, the Sinclair family is actually full of privileged and incompetent drunks. Every summer the family enjoys an entire island off the coast of Massachusetts to themselves. This is when Cadence gets to catch up with her cousins Mirren,  Johnny and a close friend by the name of Gat. This group of teenagers are called the liars because when they were younger they would cause trouble every summer.  Gat and Cadence start dating during the fourteenth summer reunion. Their mothers are incredibly spoiled and often argue about their trust funds, much to the annoyance of the grandfather.

The story begins with Cadence’s father divorcing her mother for another woman, making all the Sinclair women divorcees. Cadence is fifteen and relieved to be escaping to the island, however, a terrible accident occurs and she winds up in the hospital with amnesia and long lasting migraines. The next summer she is not allowed to return to the island and instead travels to Europe with her father. She writes multiple emails to the “liars” but they never reply. The next summer, her mother allows her to return for half of the summer in hopes that it will improve Cadence's mood and restore some of her memories. 

The writing is definitely interesting and nothing like I have read before. The chapters are extremely short making it feel incredibly fast paced and perfect for curing a reading slump. The book in itself is really short and quite easy to read. It is mostly written in standard prose but occasionally, E. Lockhart varies her language by writing in a more poetic form. She breaks up the sentences by either skipping a line or punctuation, giving it the look and feel of a poem. Other chapters are a complete short story written by Cadence, it is used as a metaphor for the Sinclair family. It mostly centralizes on the grandfather and his three daughters. It shows us the daughter's greed and how the grandfather is extremely fed up with them. This could reflect how Cadence really feels about her family. She also describes moments of real emotional pain as physical and sometimes it can be hard to differentiate whether the character is in physical or emotional pain, requiring one to read between the lines. 

For example on page 5

“Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,

then from my eyes

my eyes,

my mouth.”

Or on pages 29-30

“Every time Gat said these things, so casual and truthful, so oblivious-my veins opened. My wrists split. I bled down my palms.” 

These passages both describe pain in a very brutal and quite vulgar way. The first passage describes emotional pain and should not be taken literally. Therefore, when reading the second passage a bit further into the book, I understood it as her experiencing sadness. Yet, later we read that Gat helps her bandage the cuts. However, this can be interpreted as emotional wounds and not physical ones. I can understand how many readers would find this style of writing quite frustrating and I am not particularly fond of it myself. Overall, I think her style of writing is unique and interesting to read. 

Personally, Cadence is quite an annoying character with many poor qualities.  In my opinion, she could have been a lot more likeable and relatable if she improved some of her less appealing qualities, rather than remaining a static character. She is extremely privileged and oblivious to the outside world. Gat is an outsider and tries to explain to Cadence how he feels. It is invigorating how Cadence doesn’t try to understand and decides to stay ignorant. Gat is of Indian descent and  has deep brown skin whilst the rest of the family is white. The Grandfather seems very hesitant towards Gat and even refuses to call him by his name, opting for “young man”. He makes it clear early on his disapproval of Gat’s and Cadence’s relationship and  is therefore never really accepted into the family. Gat confides his hurt because of this rejection and Cadence mostly just dismisses it. 

One example of this is on page 182

“He’s democrat, he voted for Obama-but that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable having people of color in his beautiful family”

Gat explains this to Cadence but she does not realize this until very late into the book.

The plot twist that occurs towards the end of the book  is well done and completely unexpected. The only thing I could have wished for was a bit more depth to the characters as it was hard to sympathize and feel genuine remorse for their misfortunes throughout the book. Otherwise, it was definitely an interesting read!