To make matters worse, Harris often pits the women against each other in order to maintain control over their lives.
The Sinclair sisters depend heavily on this money, as none of them are able to support their families on their own: Penny’s job breeding dogs brings in very little money, Carrie’s jewelry boutique was a failure, and stay-at-home mom Bess has no income of her own.
Each of the women believes that she is owed a larger share of the inheritance, and they even involve their children-Johnny, Mirren, and Cady-asking them to lobby Harris for more money or prized possessions. He is happy to vote for Barack Obama yet is unwilling to accept that his granddaughter is in love with a South Asian man.Īny semblance of family harmony is dissolved when Tipper Harris dies, leaving Bess, Carrie, and Penny to argue over their relationship with their father and, more importantly, his vast fortune. While Harris pays lip service to equality and considers himself educated and enlightened on social matters, his reaction to Gat’s racial difference reveals a surprising degree of bigotry.
In fact, all of the sisters’ marriages end in divorce, and when Carrie brings Ed to the island, Harris is reluctant to accept him as one of the family. The insular family structure is overwhelming to outsiders, and on the day that Cady’s father decides to leave her mother, he notes that he cannot stand the pressure of being a Sinclair any longer. Beneath the surface, the Sinclair sisters are deeply dependent on their father, needing both his money and his approval to survive. The Sinclair clan attempt to maintain a façade of absolute perfection, but as Cady notes at the beginning of the novel, that image is built on lies and fantasy. The Sinclairs are an old New England family: Harris and Tipper have three daughters, Penny, Carrie, and Bess, each of whom has a large house on Beechwood island and an enormous inheritance. However, while Gat-who is South Asian and therefore an outsider in this Old New England family-is superficially welcomed into the family, it is clear that the budding romance between him and Cady creates tension among the Sinclairs, especially for the patriarch of the family, Harris. Gat is about the same age as Cady, Johnny, and Mirren, and the four become fast friends, calling themselves “the Liars” Cady and Gat also eventually fall in love and begin to spend more time alone together during their teenage years. Everything changes during Year Eight, however, as Cady’s aunt Carrie brings her boyfriend Ed and his nephew Gat. The summers of Cady’s childhood were uneventful, as she played with her two cousins, Johnny and Mirren. Eighteen-year-old Cady Eastman has spent nearly every summer of her life on the private island of Beechwood, near Martha’s Vineyard, along with the rest of the wealthy Sinclair family.
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