Fantasy Island (Published 2014) (2024)

A patrician New England clan decamps to their private island off Martha’s Vineyard for the summer. Of the dozen or so Sinclair family members in residence, “No one is a criminal. No one is an addict. No one is a failure.” Three lies, the first of many, provide an irresistible premise for this ticking bomb of a novel by E. Lockhart.

All the Sinclairs are rich, athletic and beautiful. They have servants, money and stiff upper lips. They go to the right schools, play excellent tennis and are as brittle as porcelain, ready to shatter into a million pieces under the strain of rivalry, silence and greed.

Overtones of the Brothers Grimm and “King Lear” abound in this quasi-fable about the powerful patriarch and his three beautiful, useless daughters, all of whom drink too much and feud over who will get the biggest slice of the family fortune. Meanwhile the next generation — Lear’s grandchildren, as it were — raises the moral ante by falling inappropriately in love, fomenting revolution and refusing to participate in the traditional Sinclair game of vying for granddad’s money.

The liars of the title are three teenage cousins — Johnny, Mirren and our narrator, Cadence — together with an outsider by the name of Gat Patil. Gat is handsome, dark-skinned and charismatic, with passionately held political beliefs such as: “Not everyone has private islands. Some people work on them. Some work in factories. Some don’t have work. Some don’t have food.” Cadence’s grandfather cannot even bring himself to address the interloper by name, but for Cadence it is love at first sight.

While the Sinclair mothers bicker over tablecloths, earrings and trust funds, the liars dream of college and freedom and true love. Lockhart admirably captures the erotic intensity of shadowy summer nights when the grown-ups either are drunk or elsewhere, or both, leaving the liars — tanned and barefoot and desperate for intimacy — to kiss and shiver and swear eternal allegiance on the beach.

Years pass; the troubles in paradise intensify. Money is tight. Drinkers become drunks. Sexual jealousies surface. And then, during the summer of her 15th year, Cadence suffers a catastrophic accident that leaves her with crippling migraines and total amnesia. But what actually happened? Was it really just an accident?