Finished reading We Were Liars in the early hours of the morning. I wake up still devastated, as if somebody important just died, or left me. The book was so good it’s hard to justify feeling mad. Everything that happens was earned, and makes thematic and narrative sense. The structure is perfect: a protagonist who keeps circling a crime until she finds the courage to face it. Her dark secret kept me reading until well after midnight, page after page. But then, the ending. The book’s clever, unbearable end. Left me heartbroken. Forsaken. Where is the hope, I think, despairing. What can we love about being human?

Michael says stories should teach us how to live. They help us make sense of suffering. This story starts with a terrible crime, and by the end all the characters are punished, even the ones we root for. What do we learn? Is the message: people are totally screwed up, not just the bad guys, but also the good guys, and especially the protagonist? She destroyed something beautiful. That’s why she feels so bad— it’s her fault. So now she has to live alone and friendless. The end.

I started digging into Goodreads, reading all the three- and two-star reviews, just to see if anybody felt as bereft as I did. Some readers seemed upset by similar issues: cleverness, lack of warmth, intellectual trickery. One reader raised a question that dogged me: why were they liars? And one guy wrote, “The book should have been called, We Were Idiots, because the crime was so epically self-centered and dumb.” I laughed out loud, somewhat consoled. I might be in the minority, but I am not alone in the human race.

Many of the glowing reviews said, “If you loved Gone Girl.” I thought: “If you loved Gone Girl??? Who could love that life-hating book?” People freak the shit out of me. I really need to put my horse blinders on, beware of mice, and other things that might startle from the side of the road.