During a recent interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” best-selling author e. Lockhart’s response to a question about Martha’s Vineyard was, “If I could say to you the hold that Martha’s Vineyard has on my imagination in a simple sentence, I wouldn’t have needed to write three novels.” As a longtime e. Lockhart fan, I am grateful that the Vineyard has empowered her imagination.
“We Fell Apart” (Delacourt Press) is the third book in Lockhart’s wildly popular series of young adult novels that includes “We Were Liars” and “Family of Liars,” both of which take place on a fictional island off the coast of Edgartown. “We Fell Apart” is set here, on the Vineyard, which is only one of many reasons to read it. While this new book is part of the “We Were Liars” family, it is just that –– family. In other words, it’s fine if this is your first introduction to the family, but if it is, you absolutely must go back and meet the rest of the gang — you’re going to love them. But I suggest you do it the old-fashioned way –– read the books first, then you can jump into the Netflix series.
“We Fell Apart” is 18-year-old gaming enthusiast Matilda Klein’s story. She describes her mother, Isadora, as more muse than mother: “Creative men who like to feel strong and vital adore her. And she adores them.” Her mother kept Matilda’s father’s identity a secret, and it remained hidden from her until the summer she graduated from high school, when she received an email.
“Matilda, this is Kingsley Cello. I am an artist. I am your father. I know I have never been in your life, but I’d like to change that. There is a painting I want to give you. Please come see me at Hidden Beach for a visit.”
Matilda does a deep dive online, and learns that her father is “about as famous as a living painter gets,” and that his painting “Persephone Escapes the Underworld” is an image of her mother as Persephone.
Matilda, who is living in Los Angeles with her mother’s “second-to-most-recent boyfriend” (Isadora herself is currently living in Mexico City with her newest love), decides to travel to the Vineyard to meet the father she has never known. When Matilda arrives at her father’s house on the Island, where “four huge, cylindrical towers from the ground, broadly windowed.”
Lockhart says that the house was inspired by one she had visited with a friend. “In July ’22, I got the chance to visit the summer retreat of a late architect on Martha’s Vineyard. It was a gray-shingled castle with four towers, many outbuildings, and a circular swimming pool — and much of it was in disrepair. I felt like I was walking through a novel, and then I thought, ‘Oh — I should write this novel!’ I fictionalized the property a lot in ‘We Fell Apart,’ and moved it to South Road so my characters could have easy beach access, but I tried to keep the sense of wonder I felt at the incredibly beautiful design.”
Matilda is told that her father is off-Island: “He had to do a thing.” She meets her half-brother Meer, stepmother June –– who isn’t there to greet her because she “is deep in the indigo pot” –– and a number of others in the cult of Kingsley Cello.
And so begins the story of a uniquely complicated family, one that lives a commune-like lifestyle in West Tisbury –– directions to the South Road house are “the fourth mailbox past the strawberry.” (Hmmmm –– all this does sound very Vineyardy.)
Lockhart doesn’t flinch at exploring creative and complicated families. (On a personal note, this story about a daughter’s relationship with her wildly successful artist father, and the extended family and fanfare, resonated deeply with me.) There are secrets and deceptions, love and rivalries, the controlling and the controlled. It’s impossible to write too much about Lockhart’s books without revealing spoilers, but it’s important to note that this book, and each of the two that preceded it, are so much more than their spoilers.
“We Fell Apart” is available at Bunch of Grapes and Edgartown Books.
