We Were Liars

Title: We are Liars

Author: E. Lockhart
Published: 2014
Pages: 227
First Line: "Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family."


I spun violently into the sky raging and banging stars from their moorings.


I picked up 'We are Liars' as one of the books I'd seen floating around as popular but that, in actuality, I knew nothing about. As such, reading it was quite the pleasant surprise.

The book revolves around three cousins, Cadence, Johnny, and Mirren (privileged children from a wealthy renowned family) and their friend Gat (a highly idealistic young man from a significantly different background). The four spend their summers together on the family island (yes, they're that wealthy). Summer is their time - to be together, to live carefree in the sun, to read, play, and explore first loves. These four are everything to each other. They know more about each other than they know about themselves - or do they?

One summer, summer fifteen, their idyll is shattered. Something happens to bring their world down around them. Something Cadence cannot remember. And now she has returned to the island and is looking for answers. If only someone - anyone - was prepared to provide them.

I'm finding this book a little hard to review, only because of not wanting to give too much away. I enjoyed reading 'We are Liars' a great deal. I enjoyed piecing together events alongside Cadence, never entirely sure if we were on the right track or not. I enjoyed the family dynamics and intrigues, even if they were are a little overly dramatic at times. Cadence's mental state and slippery grasp on reality were integrated into the story in interesting ways.

At times, I found the characters a little unrelatable - the wealthy family just a little too elite, the 'poor' friend just a little too dogmatic in his beliefs - but none of this enough to draw me out of the story. It's a book that has made it onto my recommendation list for some of my older readers at school - two of which have already devoured it.

This was the first E. Lockhart read for me, but I shall be seeking out some more. 



Rating: 4.5/5



Other Reviews Have you written a review for this book? I would love to include it, comment below and I'll add your link!

10 minutes with Emily Listfield

Last month I read Emily Listfield’s new novel Best Intentions, and this week I was very lucky to get the opportunity to interview the author. Please enjoy!

 

Hi Emily, first of all I'd like to thank you for agreeing to do this interview with me for Just One More Page.

1. For those who haven't yet read Best Intentions, can you briefly tell us what it's about?
Best Intentions examines the question of how well you can ever really know another person - even those you love best.  The narrator, Lisa Barkley, 39, has been married to her college boyfriend, Sam for many years and they have 2 daughters. They live in Manhattan and are struggling to keep their kids in private school as the economy collapses around them. When Lisa overhears a suspicious phone call, she suspects Sam of having an affair. And when her best friend, Deirdre, is murdered, she has to question how well she knows her husband - and everyone else in her life.

2. Can you describe for us a typical day in your life
Hmm. I have 2 typical days.  I work 3 days a week at Parade magazine as a consulting editor.  Those days, I get my 15 year old daughter off to school then go in and edit, come up with story ideas, etc for a new launch for Parade, Healthy Style.  The other days I work on novels at a place called the Writers Room - really just a way to get out of the house and away from distractions.

3. Is writing something you always wanted to do? If not, how/why did you start writing?
I always wanted to write.  In college, I studied literature and journalism - and I have ended up going back and forth between the two for my entire career, writing novels, doing freelance journalism, and working as an editor, sometimes separately, sometimes at the same time.

4. What are you currently working on? (If you can tell us)
I'm working on a new novel about the intersection of politics and family secrets, the right to privacy versus the public's right to know - and the toll it takes on all involved.

5. As book bloggers, we're always eager to know what people are reading. What are you reading right now? Are you enjoying it?
I'm late to the party on this one, but I just finished reading (and blogging about) Obama's book, Dreams of My Father.  It is so beautifully written, so reflective and fascinating.  His is truly an amazing journey.  And nice to have a writer in the White House!

6. What is your favourite book?
For me that's a little bit like choosing between children - I have loved different books at different times of my life.

7. In reading Best Intentions, I really felt bad for Lisa as she tried to keep afloat of everything in a busy city. How much, if any, of her experiences based on your own life in Manhattan?
Well, I'm a single Mom so the marriage is not based on my life (though I was married for 10 years.) But the sense of all the various intersecting worlds in the city, being a downtown parent with a child at a very uptown school, the economic pressures, especially lately, are all closely observed from my life and those around me.

8. I saw on your website that you have recently started your own blog, are you enjoying writing in this medium?
I love the immediacy of blogging - and I love the sense of contact and community it can foster.  Writing is essentially a solitary activity  so to feel connected with others, particularly your readers, is fantastic.  Also, it always you to enter into the dialog of the day without the year long wait for a book to be published.

9. You've written seven books now, would it be unfair to ask you to pick a favourite?
My first book, It Was Gonna Be Like Paris,  was published when I was 23 and it is kind of embarrassing now -- but it holds a special place in my heart because nothing can compare to that moment when you hear that you really will be a published writer.  It helped set everything in motion.  The book just before Best Intentions, Waiting to Surface, is the most clearly autobiographical.  It is about the disappearance and death of my husband, so that too has a special, though quite different, place for me.

10. If you could pick one book to live your life out in (as a major or minor character), which would it be and why?
This isn't advice - we wouldn't really want to live our life there - but I love Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, the doomed glamour of it all.  A day in the South of France in the company of his characters has a certain allure.

When good intentions fail…

Best Intentions Emily Listfield 338 pages; published 2009

There was a time when we were happy, purely happy, there must have been.

The relief we had at finding each other, reclaiming each other again after that early separation, the night I told Sam I was pregnant with Claire, and two years later with Phoebe, those times of course. But it is the smaller, incremental moments that return to me, the instances when recognition and desire take you by surprise, the evening we made love on the kitchen floor after a dinner party if only to put off cleaning up, our first parent/teacher conference, when the nursery school director spent forty minutes deconstructing the way Claire held scissors and our suppressed laughter burst out in torrents on the street until tears were streaming down both of our faces. We were on the same side once, completely on the same side, I'm sure of it. (245)

I’m not a big reader of mysteries, who when Atria books asked if I would be interested in reviewing a copy of Emily Listfield’s new book, Best Intentions, I was a little unsure. I needn’t have worried, however, as it was nothing like I expected; a beautiful read that was over far too quick for my liking!

Lisa lives in the upper suburbs of Manhattan. She’s the Vice President of a small but well respected PR company, her husband is a well-known journalist, her daughter’s attend a very prestigious school and her long time best friend owns a chic up-and-coming boutique. She would seem to have it made.

But Lisa is never quite comfortable in this flashy world, she never feels like she truly fits. It’s not the life she imagined for herself when she, husband Sam, girlfriend Deirdre and friend Jack were in college. So when this world that she works so hard to stay afloat in starts to crumble around her, Lisa is left with nothing to cling to. Everything she holds to be true is fading away a little more each day. Her career, and worse, her marriage is in shambles, her best friend is dead and she has to face the very real possibility that someone she knows and loves may be responsible.

Emily Listfield’s murder mystery is not your typical whodunit (and nope, I was way off course with who I thought did it), and I loved it all the more because of this. More than anything is this was the story of Lisa, and her struggle to find some balance in her constantly shifting worlds of work, love, and life.

The true pleasures of the book surface in all the in-betweens, in all the tiny details of the minor passages. Listfield paints scenes of home life with a brush of true beauty. A father eating breakfast with his daughters, a child’s messy room, an awkward teenager’s interactions with her mother – both bitter rival and most trusted confidante at the same time – these were the moments that made the book truly memorable.

I would recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who enjoys character driven mysteries or family dramas. 4.5/5

It is a sin to kill the mockingbird….

To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
309 pages; published 1960

“Atticus, are we going to win?” “No, honey.” “Then why –” “Simply because we’re licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,” Atticus said. (84)

I find it far harder to review a book that I’ve read (and loved) more than once, than one I’ve only thought okay – is that strange?

I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time in my Year 10 English class and, more than the book itself, I remember best my teacher’s utter devotion to the novel – or, more accurately, to Atticus Finch. I reread it for book club last month (again, alongside some Atticus devotees) and fell in love with it all over again.

For those of you who don’t know the story (and you really should read it!), it is set in the deep south of the 1930s and told through the perspective of Scout Finch (then six). Her father, Atticus, is assigned the defence of one Tom Robinson, a young negro man charged with the rape of a white girl, Mayella Ewell. Scout and her brother Jem, both too young to completely comprehend the situation and the implications thereof, are placed in the position of dealing with the fall out of such a case; forced to grow up just a little quicker while learning some of the world’s harsh realities.

What can I say about this book other than to recommend your reading it? I loved the characters, all – wise, innocent, kindly and cruel – I loved the small town and their range of relationships. I love Scout’s fights, Jem’s cranks, and Atticus’ morality.

Diane asked what I thought of the movie. I did watch the movie also before going to book club, and while I did enjoy it, I don’t think it can stand up to the novel (does any movie made of a book ever really?). I thought the film was (perhaps understandably) too compressed. All the lovely little moments from the book were either removed or combined with others. So while I’d still give a good recommendation of the film, I’d have to hand it over with the book at the same time. 5/5

I want a fairy!

How to Ditch Your Fairy
Justine Larbelestier
298 pages; published 2008

Rochelle gets a clothes-shopping fairy and is always well attired; I get a parking fairy and always smell faintly of petrol. How fair is that? […] why couldn’t I have, I don’t know, a good-hair fairy? Or, not even that doos, a loose-change-finding fairy. Lots of people have that fairy. Rochelle’s dad, Sandra’s cousin, Mum’s best friend’s sister. I’ll wholly settle for a loose-change fairy. (14)

Okay, I’ll fess up, I’m not so much a sucker for book covers but for quirky titles. So when I saw this one reviewed on a blog a while ago it immediately caught my attention. And when it was offered up for review, I quickly put my name down.

Fourteen year old Charlie lives in New Avalon, the best place in the entire world (at least according to its inhabitants). New Avaloners are just more interesting that everyone else… mostly due to their possession of fairies.

There are fairies for every one and every thing. Charlie’s friend Rochelle has a ‘clothes-finding fairy’, star of the water-polo team Danders Anders has a ‘grip fairy’, and Fiorenze, the most hated girl in school (at least by the other girls) has a fairy which makes every boy her age fall in love with her.

And what kind of fairy does Charlie have? A parking fairy. How ‘undoos’ (uncool) is that? For Charlie, it’s the worst thing imaginable. She’s constantly being begged, borrowed, or outright kidnapped by so-called friends and family to find good parking spots. So Charlie decides to save her sanity, and in the process gain a better fairy, by boycotting all transport. Surely lack of use will bore her fairy into leaving. She soon starts to learn, however, that it isn’t quite as easy as all that.

I really liked the idea behind this book, with people’s inherent talents and fortunes – both good and bad – translated into fairies. However, I’ve got to say that I had some issues with the book. I feel it had the potential to go a lot further than it did. Author Justine Larbelestier started to touch on several themes only to leave them hanging or gloss them over.

What was written was reasonably well done – with one exception. Larbelestier seems to have gone to great lengths to incorporate the slang and phrases of her teenage characters but, rather than using current vernacular, has made up a language unique to New Avalon. While I can appreciate the attempt, I found it very jarring, and having to refer to the glossary simply to translate words for ‘cool’, ‘hideous’, and ‘beautiful’ was intrusive to the novel.

Overall, it was a nice light read, but not necessarily one I’d go out of my way to recommend. 3/5

Other Reviews
Have you written a review for this book? I would love to include it, comment below and I'll add your link!

A Wrinkle in Time
Madeline L’Engle
198 pages, published 1962

A book on practically every list of children’s literature I have ever seen, yet I have only recently managed to get a hold of.

Though the book has a distinctly sixties feel to it (at least to me), the story itself is actually somewhat timeless – I would, in fact, have no difficultly seeing it being made into a modern film, like so many of the recent children’s adventure films.

Meg, her young brother Charles Wallace, and their newly acquired friend Calvin – all odd or outcast to some degree in their own way – strike out on an adventure to rescue and bring home the wandering father of the Murrey family. Aided by their odd ‘neighbours’ Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which (all of whom appear as a strange amalgamation of alien, changeling and angel of God – very odd, yet it works strangely well), the trio set off on the intergalactic adventure of their young lives, battling the fundamental essence of evil to reunite their family. 3/5

Motherless Brooklyn
Jonathon Lethem
336 pages, published 1999


To be honest, I only found the story so-so – though I will be fair in admitting that I am not a great fan of detective novels. That being said, I would still recommend this book for it’s insights into the main character alone.

Set in the seventies, Lionel finds himself an oddity in an unkind world – a man suffering from Tourette’s before his condition has gained public knowledge. Told entirely from his perspective, the reader is exposed to the uncontrollable mind of the well meaning Lionel as he follows the clues to discover the killer of his boss and mentor.

Watching this poor man utterly incapable of maintaining control over the words he says or the manner in which he focuses his attention – and being filled with dread at the smallest things, knowing just how it will affect him - just makes one glad they are not put in such a position. 3/5