'Fragile Fairy Tale In We Were Liars'

Fragile Fairy Tales “We are Sinclairs. No one is needy. No one is wrong.” These three lies mark the start of many more lies to come in E. Lockhart’s 2013 novel We Were Liars, which mystery-driven readers will love. The Sinclairs are a proud and headstrong family that lives on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts in the summer. Every summer is filled with cocktail hours, tennis matches, and strolls down the beach in their wealthy dream-like life. But what goes on behind the curtains of this envious family is much more tangible and heartbreakingly helpless that readers will immerse themselves inside of the clever twists of plot.
The protagonist, Cadence is the eldest grandchild in the Sinclair family who gives us a view into the family. Harris Sinclair, the grandfather of Cadence owns the island and the four mansions, which he portioned and gave out to his daughters. All Sinclairs have strong square chins, servants, and more money than they need. The three older grandchildren are Cadence, Johnny, and Mirren. During summer eight, Gat came along.
After that, the four kids are referred as the titular Liars. Cadence describes her cousins: “Johnny, he is bounce, effort, and snark...Mirren, she is sugar, curiosity, and rain…[Gat] was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee”(8-10). The author’s unique characterization pulls readers in, giving them an abstract idea of the main characters. Cadence, Mirren, and Johnny all watch their mothers accomplish nothing and vie for their grandfather’s money while managing to keep their egos intact. Years go by, and the Sinclair family is as proud as ever. But a tragic accident happens in summer 15, and everything goes wrong. Cadence is left with amnesia and terrible migraines, but with absolutely no recall of the actual accident. Despite her pleas, she is not allowed back onto the island until summer 17. This is when everything in the family starts to not look as desirable as it was before. The problems such as alcoholism and jealousy start to overlap and pile up in Cadence’s mind until she remembers the real accident, and it is much more tragic and agonizing than she thought. Lockhart’s special style makes it easy for me to connect to the story, but the characters were not developed fully enough to make me fall in love with them. The time period leaps from year to year, making it confusing to keep up sometimes. However, this is unavoidable in telling the story because it further expresses Cadence’s condition of mind, since she is the narrator.
The casual appliance of modern fairy tales in the book is also very entertaining; it does not end in the way we think fairy tales are supposed to be.
Like Gottschall said, “fiction seems to teach us to see the world through rose-colored lenses.” (3), by growing up with lots of fictional happy endings, we expect all fairy tales to end in a “good for everyone” way but in real life, there are no happy endings. There are no happy endings because there is no ending. All stories are somehow interconnected and continued after the supposed end. However, if kids watched dark, realistic fairy tales from the start, our entire society would look different. Ceridwen Dovey wrote in his article that “the ability to guess...what another human being might be thinking or feeling…[starts] to develop around the age of four”(3). So unemotional children would eventually turn into passive adults, leading to a cold
society.
The way how those fairy tales were portrayed made me think about the Disney movies I grew up with. Was Snow White happy with her prince? Was Cinderella tired of living as a royalty? In real life, is it possible to grow up with a dead mom, and later a dead dad, be treated like a servant in her own house, and still be kind to everyone? Similar to the Lockhart’s book, we will never know what happens after the ending, which is the part that is most intriguing.