Strictly, a narrator who tells lies - very postmodern. Arguably also one who conceals truths that as a reader you'd expect them to mention - the narrator of Christie's Who Killed Roger Ackroyd is the classic example.

But I think people (including me) use it more broadly to mean a narrator who's opinionated or subjective to the point where you can't trust what they say - which was what I was thinking of when I mentioned Golding's Rites of Passage. As a writer, that means writing them so that you convey the reality you want the reader to know, via the unreliable way they see it.

Emma

MF, I've got The Spire at home (returns!!) if you want to borrow it. A couple of other Goldings too, I think.

Yes, it's not necessarily outright lying that I mean...rather a way of reshaping the truth, or seeing it through a particular lens that (possibly) obscures a more objective picture.

Am loving Atonement, by the way

Ooh, Leila, more returns?? I might have to be disciplined, though - have got Atonement to finish, then Austerlitz, then Titus Groan (yes, my research it taking me all over the map!) and 7 Basic Plots meanwhile...

Alex Garland's Comais very good.

And yes I suppose the MC is an unreliable narrator because he doesn't know what is happening himself - it's a fascinating read anyway.

As Emma says Roger Ackroyd is a classic example - but Agatha Christie's Endless Night is interesting too - not cosy Christie at all.

sarah

Thanks for that. I guess the narrrator of my own novel is unreliable in that case.

JB

Titus Groan! Lucky you.

The Blind Assasin is right unreliable.

As already listed, there are some really outstanding examples, when the narrator deliberately or unconsciously twists things totally.

However, don't you think any character narrator (as opposed to omniscient authorial voice) is going to be unreliable to some extent?

If there's a car accident, and statements are taken from those involved and 5 uninvolved bystanders, apparently they all give a different version of events. My husband and I can spend an evening out with friends and come back with completely different impressions of how someone felt about something / reacted to something.

If you wrote a novel about a married couple going through a divorce, and wrote it from both their viewpoints in alternate chapters, they would certainly see events differently even if they were perfectly normal people with no particular mental or emotional problems.

My point is that we all look at things subjectively to some extent. Sometimes we succeed in being pretty objective, but a lot of our life is seen through subjective sunglasses.

So.... my hypothesis is that all character narrators are unreliable, to a greater or lesser extent...

Deb

all character narrators are unreliable - exactly. I did my masters thesis on the unreliable narrator and this is what I found. Some other books you might want to look at are:

everything by Ishiguro (Pale View of Hills and The Unconsoled do it most interestingly, I think).

Tristram Shandy by Sterne

The Master of Ballantrae (Robet Louis Stevenson - two unreliable narrators in this)

The Horned Man by James Lasdun

A Sport and A Pastime by James Salter

Lolita by Nabokov

Journeys in the Dead Season (I can't remember the author, but it is relativley recent although very derivative of Ishiguro and not as good, to my mind).

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (unrelibility from a position of ignorance or limited understanding - like Huckleberry Finn, there are definatley gaps between how the narrator perceives and relates events and how we as the reader understand them and these gaps are intended and ironic).

Samuel Richardson's Clarrisa (all of the many narrators in this very very long epistolary novel are unreliable to some extent - either through ignorance or duplicity, and its facinating how all their accounts link together).

Thomas More's Utopia - short read, and once you're into the joke, really facinating

Martinus Scribblerus - hard to get hold of this, written by a bunch of 18th century bods, Alexander Pope and Daniel Defoe being among them.

Johnathan Swift - a Modest Proposal

and that's all I can think of for now - if you want more, let me know and I'll go anf find my notes.

Best,

LadyB

Great points, all.

Deb, I certainly agree that all narrators are unreliable in the sense that every point of view is unique.

I'm mainly interested in what happens when we take this a step further, and deception become a part of the equation. So, it's not just a matter of an ironic style (Tristram Shandy) or an unusual voice/limited perspective (Curious Incident, Huck Finn), but an actual twisting/distortion of the truth in a way that is both deceptive and destructive. I think there's a difference between this and subjectivity, no?

Although Atonement isn't written in the first person, I think McEwan does an amazing job of making it possible for us to see through his characters' "unreliability" while at the same time totally empathizing with their individual persepectives. And there's something rather dark at work throughout all the misunderstandings...

I have a character in my first book who does not tell the whole story - there is a scene the reader sees and then his account of it is slightly different - and also an extended flashback where he tells another character part of the story but the crucial middle section is only told to the reader.

And yes, deception is the theme and it is fun to play around with.

There is also the story going on behind the scenes - the part of the book that is not written but happens 'off stage' - I think that is also an interesting concept to explore.

sarah

I did my masters thesis on the unreliable narrator and this is what I found

That's really interesting. Thanks for sharing that, Jenn.

Deb

Stevenson was masterly at this kind of thing - the ultimate unreliable narrator experience is The Master of Ballantrae: ALL the narrators are unreliable! The Beach At Falesa is good too if you want more of an ambivalent/conflicted narrator effect........................


falcon58

The narrator of John Cowper Powys' 'A Glastonbury Romance' has got to be the ultimate unreliable narrator, in a very different sense from what is usually meant by that term, because he(?) comes on like an all-seeing deity who's gone clean off his rocker... Starts going on about the point of view of stones by the roadside and suchlike.