We Were Liars: Megan’s Summer Reading Picks
July 31, 2014
We are thrilled to announce our second book in Megan’s Summer Reading Picks this week. The program is designed to give all our SocialMoms a chance to talk about a specific book, get to know the author, and maybe meet a new friend or two! Our second pick is We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. Below you can read our interview with E. and learn more about the novel.
Megan: I absolutely loved reading We Were Liars. What was the inspiration behind the book?
E: Thank you! Sibling rivalry over money and affection is a universal. I got interested in the relationships between three adult sisters and a patriarch on an isolated, privately-owned island – and it got even more interesting when I looked at that picture from the perspective of the teenage grandkids of that patriarch.
Megan: Tell us more about the setting and this particular class of characters. Why did you choose them?
E. Growing up, I often had one foot in and one foot out of a world of pretty WASP-y privilege. I lived in a commune with a single mother and yet spent summers going to Martha’s Vineyard garden parties. I went to prep school and to Vassar on scholarship. The characters in We Were Liars live a life of incredible and unquestioned privilege – until an outsider, a boy called Gat Patil, pushes them to interrogate their world. Gat is the character most like me.
Megan: There are a lot of twists and turns in this novel. I’m assuming you had to plot out most of the book before you started writing? Tell us about that process.
E. I bled and vomited and sobbed a lot. Also, I used the word-processing program Scrivener. It lets you rearrange chunks of text very easily.
Megan: How did you get started writing and can you tell us a little about your journey?
E. I am the daughter of a playwright. His name is Len Jenkin. He is a fantastic artist and being around his work in rehearsal gave me an ear for language and a belief in the power of stories and words.
Megan: Can you give us your summer book recommendations (adult or young adult)?
E. Recently I loved reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and The Magicians by Lev Grossman. They both have realistic settings infused with huge amounts of magic. I adore books like that. For YA, I loved Tom McNeal’s Far Far Away, which makes amazing use of fairy tales, which are also a big part of We Were Liars, though used in a very different way.
We Were Liars Description:
A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.
We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.
Buy We Were Liars at Amazon | Indie Bound | Barnes & Noble
E. Lockhart is the author of We Were Liars, Fly on the Wall, Dramarama, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and the Ruby Oliver quartet: The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, The Treasure Map of Boys, andReal Live Boyfriends. How to Be Badwas co-written with Lauren Myracle and Sarah Mlynowski.
Disreputable History was a Printz Award honor book, a finalist for the National Book Award, and recipient of the Cybils Award for best young adult novel. We Were Liars is a New York Times bestseller.
Look for the next installment of Megan’s Summer Reading Picks soon!
