Rating: ✫✫✫✫
Wow. I'm finding it really difficult to begin this review, because there are so many things to say about this book. When I was in the middle of We Were Liars, I wasn't convinced by it at all. I did appreciate that the writing was beautiful, and I thought there were a lot of important themes that were raised throughout the novel, but I wouldn't say I was necessarily enjoying it.
Then I reached the final section: 'The Truth'. My view changed entirely. That twist was extraordinary, and I definitely did not see it coming. Simply because of this plot twist, I would be very tempted to read the whole thing again, to pick up on the details that I now know I originally missed. I wouldn't necessarily say I enjoyed the book for the most part, but it really made me think, and it has stuck with me.
Introduction
We Were Liars tells the story of Cadence, who spends her summers at a private island owned by her grandparents. Each summer, the family congregate on the island. Cady, her cousins Mirren and Johnny, and a friend Gat, call themselves The Liars.
During summer fifteen (a direct reference to Cady's age for that particular summer), Cady is found seriously injured, alone, and in the water at the beach. Since this time, Cady cannot remember the circumstances that led to her accident, despite many attempts at gaining information from her family.
The book follows Cady during summer seventeen, when she has finally been allowed by her mother to return to the island. With many flashbacks and conversations with 'The Liars', Cady slowly remembers details about summer fifteen, and what happened to her during the accident. The trouble is, the truth might be difficult to swallow.
*spoilers ahead*
Due to the nature of the twist, I think it's important to discuss the book from a plot perspective in two different sections. The first focusing on everything that comes before the twist; the second, afterwards.
The majority of the book focuses on Cady trying to figure out what happened to her in summer fifteen. I will admit, I really struggled to enjoy this book for a long time. The hazy plot that jumped around a lot was difficult to follow, and the characters did very little to appeal themselves to me.
From the moment you open the book, you have to get past the complicated introductory chapters. So many characters are presented in the initial pages, and it is never very clear where Cady fits in. It isn't immediately obvious that all these characters are her family members, and I did have to go back several times to grasp where everybody fitted in. This made it difficult very early on to get engrossed in the story. When I did eventually get to grips with all the different family members, I just found them dysfunctional and annoying. The worst part is, I didn't only find them annoying because they'd been intentionally written as annoying characters; it was more because I was despairing over the lack of care the author had taken for most of the book when discussing them. There just never seemed to be any characterisation of anyone other than Cady, and occasionally Gat, and it really bothered me to invest time in a plot which didn't really seem to be going anywhere. It wasn't until later on that I realised that the book was written with deliberate vagueness. After all, how else could this particular plot twist have been realistic?
This same problem applies in exactly the same way to Cady's cousins/friends; the other Liars. For the majority of the story, I found myself disliking Mirren, Johnny, and even Gat, because they just didn't seem like they really cared about Cady. They lied about where they'd been and what they'd been doing. They lied about why they didn't respond to any of Cady's emails during the summer after her accident. After a while, I found it very tedious to read about day after day where the Liars didn't really have much to offer in the way of plot. The loneliness and isolation that Cady has to endure for most of the book seems unnecessary. The only purpose it served? It was the perfect setting for a tragedy.
From the moment you open the book, you have to get past the complicated introductory chapters. So many characters are presented in the initial pages, and it is never very clear where Cady fits in. It isn't immediately obvious that all these characters are her family members, and I did have to go back several times to grasp where everybody fitted in. This made it difficult very early on to get engrossed in the story. When I did eventually get to grips with all the different family members, I just found them dysfunctional and annoying. The worst part is, I didn't only find them annoying because they'd been intentionally written as annoying characters; it was more because I was despairing over the lack of care the author had taken for most of the book when discussing them. There just never seemed to be any characterisation of anyone other than Cady, and occasionally Gat, and it really bothered me to invest time in a plot which didn't really seem to be going anywhere. It wasn't until later on that I realised that the book was written with deliberate vagueness. After all, how else could this particular plot twist have been realistic?
This same problem applies in exactly the same way to Cady's cousins/friends; the other Liars. For the majority of the story, I found myself disliking Mirren, Johnny, and even Gat, because they just didn't seem like they really cared about Cady. They lied about where they'd been and what they'd been doing. They lied about why they didn't respond to any of Cady's emails during the summer after her accident. After a while, I found it very tedious to read about day after day where the Liars didn't really have much to offer in the way of plot. The loneliness and isolation that Cady has to endure for most of the book seems unnecessary. The only purpose it served? It was the perfect setting for a tragedy.
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Despite all these problems, the main character of Cady still seems perfectly content for the vast majority of the story. She admits that what she knows doesn't add up with what the Liars have told her. Yet she still regularly confesses her happiness.
"Life feels beautiful that day."
Then it hits. The twist arrives. Life feels beautiful to Cady, because the beauty isn't real. The Liars ceased to exist after Cady's accident, because she started a fire that trapped them all, and she injured herself in the process. Her grief blocked this all from her mind, and now her closest friends have been replaced by the manifestations in her head.
"I guess that is why they've been here. I needed them."
I can't say I was really enjoying the book until the end, when this twist was revealed. This really saved it for me, as it made me finally understand the rest of the story. Everything suddenly becomes clear. We know why Cady's Grandad paid for her to be on a trip that removed her from the island the summer after the accident. We know why the Liars don't appear to spend any time with their families. We know why the Liars didn't reply to any of Cady's emails. They simply no longer existed, except for in Cady's mind.
Suddenly the previous irritation I had felt towards the Liars disappeared, as the truth of what I read really sank in.
It's tough that the reader has to fully invest themselves in a lot of pretty average plot development in order to get to this point. However it does change the way you see the entire story, and I do believe the twist is very powerful. The reason the whole story was very vague in places was so that it would be impossible to guess the truth. I thought this reveal was genius. I originally believed that the author had made the narrative unnecessarily sporadic and difficult, but now I see perfectly why it needed to be like this. It's an exact representation of Cady's mind. We see the world only through her unstable emotions, because that is the only world in which the Liars exist anymore. It's so clear from this point why there is so little interaction between Cady's family and the Liars, and all the little details that at first really annoyed me suddenly struck me as very carefully and beautifully written.
It's tough that the reader has to fully invest themselves in a lot of pretty average plot development in order to get to this point. However it does change the way you see the entire story, and I do believe the twist is very powerful. The reason the whole story was very vague in places was so that it would be impossible to guess the truth. I thought this reveal was genius. I originally believed that the author had made the narrative unnecessarily sporadic and difficult, but now I see perfectly why it needed to be like this. It's an exact representation of Cady's mind. We see the world only through her unstable emotions, because that is the only world in which the Liars exist anymore. It's so clear from this point why there is so little interaction between Cady's family and the Liars, and all the little details that at first really annoyed me suddenly struck me as very carefully and beautifully written.
The Characters
A lot of the problems I had with the novel, as I've already explained, are resolved when the truth is revealed about the events of summer fifteen. Yet even after the twist is revealed, there is very little interaction between Cady and her family. The Liars are exposed as being figments of Cady's imagination, but what about the rest of the family; Cady's grandfather, and her aunties in particular? They remain a mystery, and I don't feel that there has ever been a moment when I have been entirely convinced by the Sinclairs. I find myself wishing that Cady had had a little more interaction with her remaining family at the end of the novel. Cady finally says her goodbyes to the Liars at the end of the book, and it would have been good to see the change in her emotional frame of mind. She is suggested to be healing well, and coming to terms with the truth, and seeing a stronger interaction from her at the end of the story might have demonstrated the difference from her original, distorted view. Instead, the very vague narrative is continued right to the last page, showing very little plot or character development. After the extraordinary plot twist, I was prepared for a powerful ending, and I will admit that the last few pages were a little bit of a disappointment to me.
Cady herself remains a mystery. I lost patience with her early on, although of course it did ebb when I reached the end and I saw how fragile she had been. The character narrated the story beautifully, and the little bursts of poetry really portrayed to the reader how much she leaned on her emotions. I'm actually impressed that this was achieved in the way it was without giving anything away. She also talks a lot about her love for Gat, but that's the only real insight we get into her personality. A lot of the plot, including the reality of what happened leading up to her accident in summer fifteen, we are forced to patch together ourselves with the snippets of information she decides to give us. I'm still torn between thinking this whole novel is a piece of literary genius, or if the characters and plot are just tedious.
I do understand that it must be difficult for Lockhart to have maintained these characters knowing that the ending was going to upheave the whole foundation for their existence. I just can't help but feeling that this still could have been done effectively with more interesting and endearing characters. If the reader isn't engrossed enough by the characters to make it to the plot twist, the whole thing is futile. Establishing all of the characters a little better may have done the world of good.
Themes
The first, and most obvious, was the question over Cady's mental health. It's never quite clear if she suffers with her mental health, or if there is something else gong on. This is, of course, in relation to the events of the book leading up to the final reveal. Cady definitely has aspects of depression, but, as she frequently holds back exactly what she is thinking, it's never clear if this is the fundamental point of her story or a sideline to a bigger issue. It's such an important theme, and the way it is handled perfectly highlights the inconsistency in Cady's head. One day, she is perfectly content and all she wants to do is spend time with Gat; the next, she spends all day in bed, with apparent migraines. The narrative is very up and down in this way, and it sets the whole plot up perfectly for the final section. It's only natural at the end for us to believe that Cady has blocked reality out of her mind. She has been very mentally vulnerable throughout the whole book, and Lockhart sets up the story so that the reader cannot dispute that the ending is perfectly feasible.
With Cady's state of mind as it is, it's only natural that she uses fairytales as a means of escape inside her invented reality. She is drawn to a fairytale life, but is consistently caught in the middle of a tragedy, whether she likes it or not. Every fairytale she tells throughout the course of the book has a tragic element hidden by the apparent fantasy.
"Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters..."
"Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters..."
"Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters..."
Each story starts with this sentence - an obvious reference to the three daughters of Cady's Grandfather - but each story is different. From King Lear to Beauty and the Beast, and all the stories in between, Cady focuses on the beauty of a fantastical world, but always finds herself drawn to the tragic end to each tale. This gives a continuous insight into her state of mind, and hints at an ending that is incredibly difficult to guess. Cady is good at imagining stories, just as she imagines a different ending to the story of the Liars.
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Equally as relevant is the symbol of the three sisters in their houses. From the very beginning, it is made clear that each sister (Cady's mother and two aunts) has her own house, and that these houses are symbols of a very real power struggle. The fact that Cady, (and, as we are led to believe, the other Liars) is drawn into this power struggle by her Mother adds to this tension.
"What if we could somehow stop being the Beautiful Sinclair family and just be a family?"
The reason Cady came up with the plan to burn the house to the ground in summer fifteen was because she was sick of the continuous power struggle in her family. The house they she destroyed was a symbol of this poisonous power struggle.
"We burned not a home, but a symbol.
We burned a symbol to the ground."
I wish this fact had been emphasised a little more. In Cady's haste and obvious confusion when remembering what happened, she glosses over the reason for the plan relatively quickly. I'm disappointed, as I know that with the detached characters of the three sisters and the consistent symbolism of the different houses, there was huge motivation for the Liars to burn this particular house to the ground. More should have been made of this to really drive home the reasoning behind what happened that summer. The accident happened because of a toxic family network, but this isn't ever explicitly said. The symbolism here is fantastic, and there are no loose ends, but sometimes when an important plot point is being made, it needs to be clear. If there had been a stronger point made that the family power struggle was what caused the fire, it would have made for a much more powerful ending. An ending that just possibly might have wrapped up the whole thing nicely with a bit of character development in the sisters.
Hey, ho. You can't have everything.
The Style
I really found Lockhart to be a very emotional and dynamic writer. From the very beginning, I could see that this wasn't going to be your average narrative. For example, very early on, Cady references the day her Dad left them by stating:
"Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest."
You can sense right here that this story, and the character of Cady in particular, will take you on a journey. I loved how there were very short chapters, as I felt they really reflected Cady's personality. It's clear throughout the book that her thoughts are very sporadic, and I really thought that her confusion and hectic thought process was clear even in the structure of the novel.
The only problem with this tactic was that it was always incredibly difficult to tell what was real, and what was a flashback. On the one hand, I didn't mind this, as it really blurred the lines between Cady's reality and what she had actually made up in her head. In a way, it really drove home the point of the book. However, from the reader's point of view, it was often a real struggle to work out whether you were with Cady in summer fifteen or summer seventeen. I feel that maybe the point could have been made just as well without such detriment to the reader.
The multiple sections of poetry, for example, do this perfectly, while still maintaining the integrity of the novel. Cady often breaks off from her normal narrative into poetic lines where her emotions are bared to the reader, yet the book still reads as one cohesive story. This was the perfect way of demonstrating her vulnerable personality, without the reader struggling to understand where they are in the story. The regular use of poetry sections makes the story seem a little repetitive, but I don't think this is a problem. It only becomes a problem when the reader fails to understand it.
The Verdict
Before I started this book, I was convinced that I would enjoy it. Imagine my surprise when I was halfway through and finding elements of book very tedious. The sporadic plot development, the lack of endearing characters, and a story that was generally very difficult to connect with.
Looking back, having finished it, I see something quite different. I see the reasoning behind the vague details, and the beauty of the poetry expressing Cady's emotional trauma.
I still can't bring myself to say I enjoyed this book, but it has stayed with me. All I want to do now is to go back and read the book again, taking the advice of E. Lockhart herself when she says:
"See the world as it is, not as you wish it to be."
I want to go back and see the truth about summer fifteen for what it really was. And I want to read the book for the emotional rollercoaster that it is, and not the well-structured and clearly narrated story that I originally wished it would be.
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