JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
You may know author E. Lockhart from her best-selling novel "We Were Liars." It came out back in 2014, and the young adult novel became a bestseller. And the story about an affluent family who spent every summer on a fictional island off of Martha's Vineyard gripped new audiences through its Amazon Prime series adaptation, which got some big emotional reactions from fans online.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED TIKTOKKER #1: (Crying).
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) And you...
UNIDENTIFIED TIKTOKKER #1: Oh, it's a song (crying).
UNIDENTIFIED TIKTOKKER #2: And this ending was insane. Jaw dropped on the floor.
UNIDENTIFIED TIKTOKKER #3: This is devastating. I'm heartbroken.
UNIDENTIFIED TIKTOKKER #4: Oh, my - oh, my God (laughter).
UNIDENTIFIED TIKTOKKER #5: (Laughter) I can't breathe and I have full body chills.
SUMMERS: Those were videos from TikTok users Tyler Conroy (ph), @emma0612 (ph), @haleylikestoread (ph) and @addieonaddyy (ph).
Now, Lockhart is back with a new novel. It's called "We Fell Apart." It traces the story of a young woman named Matilda. She receives a message from the father she's never met.
E LOCKHART: And she flies across country, and she gets to this kind of incredible property on the island of Martha's Vineyard, and her father is not there. Instead, living in this castle, basically, is a stepmother she never knew she had, a half-brother she never knew she had, who's her same age, and two other teenage boys who are living there for various reasons. And she kind of gets sucked into the world of life in this castle, which is kind of an alternative life with a lot of big freedoms and big rules.
SUMMERS: "We Fell Apart" is set in the same world as the original "We Were Liars" story, but Lockhart didn't always intend for that to be the case, until she took a trip to Martha's Vineyard and came upon this massive, castle-like property.
LOCKHART: It was falling apart. It was exquisitely beautiful, and I felt like I had walked into a novel. And then I thought, oh (laughter), I've walked into a novel that I need to be writing.
SUMMERS: I wanted to know what made E. Lockhart want to revisit this world for a third time.
LOCKHART: I mean, honestly, 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, you know? It's a beautiful coastline with a long history, right? There's also just this raging sea that is terrifying and full of sharks, right? Like the story of Plymouth Rock and the story of "Jaws," right? These are two of our big Massachusetts stories, and they both have a lot of space in kind of the American mind. So I think I'm interested in that - right? - in the danger and in the iconography.
SUMMERS: I wonder, what do you think it is about "We Were Liars" and the universe that you've constructed that has just resonated with so many people over the last decade?
LOCKHART: Well, I don't really think it's the aspirational nature of it, although some people will argue that, right? Some people will say, oh, we all want to watch rich people behaving badly. We all want to spend a summer on a fancy private island or on a fancy Martha's Vineyard estate. But I don't think that's what my most passionate readers are coming to my stories for. What they're doing that I can see, you know, anecdotally on TikTok and Instagram and in the comments on my social media, is having a big reaction. They either hate this book or this TV show so much they want to throw it across the room and tell everybody not to read it, or they are breaking down in tears and saying, thank you so much, and also, will you pay for my therapy?
SUMMERS: (Laughter).
LOCKHART: You know, we can get so much entertainment from our phones and from those social media channels, but what we don't get is a big emotional investment, right? We can get laughter, we can get, you know, dopamine hits, can go on travel adventures, but we need a book or a longer-form drama to give us an emotional catharsis. And people have a big reaction to these books, right? It's not always positive, but they have a big reaction.
SUMMERS: These books also seem to have these sort of big questions about morality at the center of them. What is it about grappling with that that continues to entice you? And I'm thinking of this interview that I read with you from, I think, a couple years ago, where you talked about how your books as well as the show ask this question of, like, what do you do when you're ashamed of yourself? What do you do when you've done something horrible, and whether a person can find forgiveness for themselves?
LOCKHART: Well, I am ongoing interested in that question, right? When you've done something you're ashamed of, do you sit under the rug? Do you, you know, get into that rug and pull everything out and look at it? Can you accept yourself? Can you tell yourself that you're going to change? You know, can you find a place of forgiveness, or do you carry that weight with you all the time? I mean, this is a fundamental question about just being a person, right? I mean, that's what fiction is about, whether it's my fiction or somebody else's fiction. It's about this problem of being a human being and figuring out a moral compass or a way to be in the world.
SUMMERS: And I think what really strikes me about that is that across your books we're talking about young people who are on that journey, who still have so much of their lives to live, who are trying to figure out all of those big, heady questions with not so many years of experience under their belts.
LOCKHART: Well, I think one of the reasons I continue, you know, in middle age to be interested in writing about teenagers and for teenagers is that teenagers are in a really important and kind of exciting transition in life, right? They are separating from the institution that is their family of origin, that is their schooling, that is their church, that is their sports team, that is - you know, I could name any - you know, a whole lot of other things...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
LOCKHART: ...Their scout troop, right? There are these institutions that we participate in as young people, and when we're very young, the - they're just the water that we're swimming in. And as we become teenagers, we begin to question, rebel, re-navigate our relationship to those institutions as we prepare to leave the nest or, you know, settle down in there. But we have to navigate that because we can suddenly see those institutions that shape us. And we're going to emerge into adulthood, you know, choosing our own identity and not just swimming in the water that we've always been in.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with E. Lockhart. Her new book "We Fell Apart" is out now. Thank you so much.
LOCKHART: Oh, it was a pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL SUBY'S "WE WERE LIARS MAIN THEME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
