“We Were Liars”, a novel by E. Lockhart, tells the story of Cadence Sinclair Eastman. Cadence, better known as Cady, lives in Burlington, Vermont with her mother, Penelope. Cadence and her family spend every summer at their private island, named Beechwood, off the coast of Massachusetts, until Summer Fifteen when something occurs and the family does not want Cady to remember it. After her accident, in an attempt to keep Cady away from the island and not allow her to remember the details of her accident, Harris Sinclair, Cady’s grandfather, sends her to Europe for ten weeks with her father. The next summer, Summer Seventeen, Harris decides it is time Cadence can return to the island, and with her return come lots of questions and many things to figure out surrounding her accident. Near the end of the novel, Cadence learns that she, Gat, Mirren, and Johnny, who are all called “the Liars,” set a fire during Summer Fifteen, which is how her …show more content…
The section opens with Cadence’s sudden memory of her and the other Liars setting a fire. Shortly after she has the memory, Cady goes to find the Liars to talk to them and piece together what she does and does not yet know and is first presented with Johnny. She and Johnny talk about the fire and is able to remember the drinking, setting the fire, and why the Liars made the decision to burn Clairmont to the ground.
Only a few nights later, Cadence and Gat find themselves at the tennis courts far past sunset throwing tennis balls for Fatima and Prince Phillip, the two dogs that died in the fire, when Gat reaches down to stroke Fatima’s “soft doggy ears”. Not only is this a very minute detail, but something that is often overlooked because of the fact that it is such a simple thing. But, Gat cannot pet Fatima, she is dead and this only further accentuates that there is something incredibly long that no one is talking