We Were Liars

The Resolution

I've made a New Year's resolution this year to read more. I've noticed over the past few years that my rise in smartphone usage has adversely affected my appetite for reading anything more substantial than listicles on Buzzfeed, and it's a trend that needs to be turned around as soon as possible. In order to put my resolution into terms that I felt I could comply with, I've given myself a specific amount of reading that must get done. This year, I'm going to read a minimum of two books per month. That is unless I decided to wipe the cobwebs from my copy of Infinite Jest. In which case, I'll give myself more time because that book is my Everest, and is known to take readers an entire season to finish.

So far, so good.

Image via Flickr (Abhi Sharma)

 I began the year by reading The Art of Racing in the Rain and, man, I wish I had thought to blog about that book because it made me think a lot of stuff. Mostly, I thought that I'm sick of the ol' slutty Lolita trope. It seemed increasingly dangerous in this book because a small underlining theme emerged that may lead some readers to believe that there are a sizeable amount of false rape accusations floating around, which is most definitely not true. I distinctly remember a line from Eve's mom about the girl being beyond her years (paraphrased) and someone in the court setting saying something along the lines of sometimes rape accusations are true and sometimes they're wrong and, oh dear lord, who hurt you Garth Stein? Why don't you put your protagonist in a seemingly insurmountable situation of his own making, and have him truly grow as a character by learning from his mistakes? Did you really feel that he had to be entirely blameless to be a good person? I dunno, whatevs. I still cried at the ending.

Oh yeah, the book that I'm actually here to talk about:

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Image via Goodreads.com

 I tend to wait until after I read a book to really delve into the Amazon comments. I don't want the negative ones to sway my enjoyment of the book, and I don't want the good ones to give me an overinflated sense of enjoyment. Once I was done, I jumped in to see what others thought, and I noticed a trend among the comments with the least stars; they seemed to be overly concerned with the author's use of odd prose, but, I say, do your thing, girl. Sometimes e.e. cummings work sits wrong with people, but there's certainly not a finite rule to how you write your own book. I actually enjoyed the little fairy tales interjected in some of the chapters. I'd actually like to go back and reread them and see how they truly correlate with the ending of the book, but I'm too lazy, and that would be devoting entirely too much time to an overwrought beach read.

Now, with that being said. Just because E. Lockhart can and should ignore the structure haters, it doesn't mean I didn't roll my eyes a little bit at her nouns-as-adjectives descriptions of the liars. "She is sugar, curiosity, and rain." *eyeroll* Deep. Very deep.

I also find it hard to believe that this book takes place in today's society but, instead of constantly snapchatting their friends back home and taking selfies of themselves on the beach and instagramming all the yummy foods they're eating on the Cape they're actually spending time with each other and doing things like reading and talking. This book could have easily been set in the early nineties and avoided technology, for the most part, altogether. Instead, Lockhart mentions iPads and cell phones, and we're just supposed to believe they aren't using them. I realize that this is nitpicky, and there are teenagers that can enjoy themselves today without technology, but come on.

Another critique I noticed on Amazon was that the main character, Cadence, is immature for a teenager. I didn't find this to be true at all. She had a big crush on a boy that she thought was the one, and she had her feelings hurt and was a bit overdramatic, even before the twist was revealed, but that is what teenagers do. Plus, she had a massive head injury that pretty much left her stagnate in the emotional and mental growth areas that are essential to maturity, so lay off her a bit.
Overall, I recommend this book. It was a quick and entertaining read and, as I mention below, even though I saw what was coming, I still enjoyed the ride, and was still surprised by some of the twists and turns.

Also, this is my first blog post of what I'm hoping will become a series of posts about the books I read this year, so I hope someone stumbles upon this and either agrees, or vehemently disagrees with my opinion of whatever the novel in question may be, and they let me know in the comments. Just don't be mean, k?

Spoilery Diatribe

Read past this point only if you've read the book yourself, or if you don't mind the big twist being revealed.

 Alright, I would actually like to take a poll of people who have read the book and knew the liars were dead the whole time. I am not the best when it comes to seeing ahead of the literary curve, but I saw where this was going the second she landed on the beach on summer 17 and the liars were standing away from everyone who was greeting them. Of course, she had a head injury, and all we knew was that she was found washed up in the ocean, so I was caught off guard by the actual way they died. I for sure thought that they got into a boating accident with Gat at the wheel, but no, they started the world's dumbest fire.

I'm pretty sure when I was 15 that I knew how dangerous fire was, and that gasoline only makes it that much more dangerous. Lockhart kind of gives her characters an out by explaining that they were pretty drunk, but I would have liked to bear witness to the paper-rock-scissors for who had to go to the 3rd floor. You better believe, in that scenario, that I'd peace out if I didn't get to light the match whilst jaunting merrily out the front door.

One of the things that bothered me most about the ending is that we don't have a clear resolution to how Cadence ultimately deals with the past. Do her headaches cease once she's realized the truth? Is it worse or better that she knows what happened? I must admit, I shed a tear when Gat swam away into the water to go back to wherever they were. Although, I think a more fitting ending would be for the liars to be essentially stuck in Cuddledown forever, and for Cadence to inherit her grandfather's property. She'd grow old with her friends, and would realize the isolation of holding onto objects from the past.

Thus ends my first (in a super long time) blog post.