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Posted on Aug 15, 2018

What is an Unreliable Narrator: Definition and Examples

In literature, an unreliable narrator is a character who tells a story with a lack of credibility. There are different types of unreliable narrators (more on that later), and the presence of one can be revealed to readers in varying ways — sometimes immediately, sometimes gradually, and sometimes later in the story when a plot twist leaves us wondering if we’ve maybe been a little too trusting.

While the term “unreliable narrator” was first coined by literary critic Wayne C. Booth in his 1961 book, The Rhetoric of Fiction , it’s a literary device that writers have been putting to good use for much longer than the past 80 years. For example, "The Tell-Tale Heart" published by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843 utilizes this storytelling tool, as does Wuthering Heights , published in 1847.

But wait, is any narrator really reliable?

This discussion can lead us down a proverbial rabbit hole. In a sense, no, there aren’t any 100% completely reliable narrators. The “ Rashomon Effect ” tells us that our subjective perceptions prohibit us from ever having a totally clear memory of past events. If each person subjectively remembers something that happened, how do we know who is right? "Indeed, many writers have used the Rashomon Effect to tell stories from multiple first-person perspectives — leaving readers to determine whose record is most believable." (Check out As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner for an example).

For the purpose of this article, however, we will refer to narrators who are purposefully unreliable for a specific narrative function.

Literary function of an unreliable narrator

Fiction that makes us question our own perceptions can be powerful. An unreliable narrator can create a lot of grey areas and blur the lines of reality, allowing us to come to our own conclusions.

Fallible storytellers can also create tension by keeping readers on their toes — wondering if there’s more under the surface, and reading between the lines to decipher what that is. Unreliable narrators can make for intriguing, complex characters: depending on the narrator’s motivation for clouding the truth, readers may also feel more compelled to keep reading to figure out why the narrator is hiding things.

Finally, all unreliable narrators are first-person: they live in the world of the story and will have an inherent bias or perhaps even an agenda. While you may find an unreliable narrator who's written in the second-person or third-person point of view, this is generally rare.

PRO-TIP: If you'd like to see the different points of view in action, check out this post that has plenty of point of view examples .

Types of unreliable narrators

Just like trying to classify every type of character would be an endless pursuit, so is trying to list every type of unreliable narrator. That said, we've divided these questionable raconteurs into three general types to better understand how they work as a literary device.

1) Deliberately Unreliable: Narrators who are aware of their deception

This type of narrator is intentionally lying to the reader because, well, they can. They have your attention, the point of view is theirs, and they’ll choose what to do with it, regardless of any “responsibility” they might have to the reader.

A quick note about this kind of narrator: people want to read about characters they can connect with or relate to . This is one of the tricky parts of writing this kind of narrator: the character has to be compelling enough that we’ll keep connecting with them even if we suspect we’re being misled. We don’t have to necessarily like them, but we need to understand them. For instance, even Alex from A Clockwork Orange has an underlying humanity: his desire for individual freedom above all. His flagrant lies are therefore an exercise of his freedom.

2) Evasively Unreliable: Narrators who unconsciously alter the truth

The motivations for this kind of narrator are often quite muddy — sometimes it’s simple self-preservation, other times it’s slightly more manipulative. Sometimes the narrator isn’t even aware they are twisting the truth until later in the book. Their unreliability often stems from the need to tell the story in a way that justifies something, and their stories are often embellished or watered down.

These kinds of contradictory characters whose mindsets aren’t clear can keep readers anxiously waiting for the narrator’s moment of clarity — drawing their own conclusions all the while.

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3) Naively Unreliable: Narrators who are honest but lack all the information

Unlike the previous two types, this type of narrator is not unreliable on purpose — they simply lack a traditional, “greater understanding.” This kind of unreliability can allow the reader to view your story with fresh eyes. The narrator’s “unorthodox” interpretations might only provide us with partial explanations of what’s going on, forcing us to dig a little deeper and connect the dots. These naive narrators can also encourage readers to take more significant notice of things we might’ve taken for granted.

Craft tip: Don’t cheat the reader. Great novels inspire readers to come back and find new meaning and elements they hadn’t yet discovered the first time. This can be especially true of stories told by unreliable narrators. If you employ this literary device gradually throughout the novel, ensure you leave clues for your readers along the way. Drop hints that make us question the validity of our source and have us eagerly reading to find the next clue that will act as another part of the story-puzzle. If you suddenly reveal out of nowhere that the narrator hasn’t been giving us all the facts in an abrupt twist, readers will feel they have been cheated.

Unreliable narrator examples

Once you’ve determined what your narrator’s motivation for being unreliable is — or isn’t! — you can start thinking about how you will use this literary device to achieve your narrative goal.

If you’re toying with the idea of writing a story that fills readers’ mind with question marks, here are a few examples of wavering yarn-spinners from literature to help you get started (spoilers ahead!).

Deliberately Unreliable

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess The protagonist and narrator, Alex, is a notoriously brutal character who does not feel a sense of responsibility to anything or anyone other than himself. His lack of credibility feels deliberate and coy straight off the bat. He speaks ' Nadsat ,' a dialect that confounds other characters and keeps the reader on their back foot. He is also a skilled manipulator who excels in getting others to let their guards down.

Alex is presumably aware that the narrative audience will be repulsed by his accounts, yet he repeatedly refers to the audience as “brother” — a term that implies familiarity and camaraderie. Readers can never be quite certain if they’re being confided in or reeled in as another one of Alex’s deceitful games.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie While some fallible storytellers may lack credibility because they deliver false or skewed information, others are untrustworthy because of the information that they omit. They leave out key pieces of information without which the reader is left in the dark. This is the case in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd , whose narrator — Dr. Sheppard — is one of the most classic unreliable examples.

Dr. Sheppard takes us through Poirot’s investigation into the murder of Roger Ackroyd. He is genial and rather neutral throughout the story, seeming to explain the events as they happened without bias. Only at the end is it revealed that this voice we have allowed to carry us through the novel is actually the voice of the murderer. Sheppard also reveals at the end that he started writing the manuscript with the intention of documenting Poirot’s failure. Therefore the entire manuscript was based on a detailed lie by omission. 100% deliberate deception!

PRO-TIP:  To read more of the Queen of Mystery's works, go here for ten of Agatha Christie's best stories .

Evasively Unreliable

Life of Pi by Yann Martel At the end of the novel, when Pi wraps up his fantastical story of being stranded at sea with a group of animals, we hear another version of his story — where the animals are replaced by humans, and the events are much more tragic and disturbing. Pi never concretely confirms which story is true: is the first version simply a coping mechanism or is the second version simply to placate the unbelieving cops? Readers are faced with the choice to pick which story they believe, as the narrator does not make it clear — and even if he did specify which version is the true one, would we believe him?

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver Narrated through Eva’s letters to her husband, We Need To Talk About Kevin takes place in the aftermath of her son committing a deadly attack at his high-school. It’s not easy to be totally honest with ourselves — especially when it comes to looking within and seeing where we might be at fault.

The only thing objective about Eva is that her accounts are subjective, and we are left to come to our own conclusions based on her descriptions. Was Kevin inherently sociopathic? Did Eva do her best as a mother or did she reject Kevin as an unwanted outcome? How much blame should Eva shoulder for Kevin's actions? We won’t find the answers in Eva’s letters, but they do prompt us to reflect on these questions in the first place.

Naively Unreliable

Room by Emma Donoghue Five-year-old Jack is an often quoted example of an unknowingly unreliable narrator. Jack is not withholding information from the reader or providing false information. He simply reports the facts as he sees them — however, as a child, his accounts often lack insight into the implications of what is happening around him. Because of this, even though Jack’s voice is a poignantly honest one, his narration is not a source of information that can be taken at face value.

Forrest Gump by Winston Groom Forrest is another example of a narrator who’s not deliberately unreliable in order to pull the wool over the readers’ eyes or to “save face.” From the outset, we are aware that Forrest doesn’t comprehend things like the “average” person does, and we’re aware that we might not be able to take everything he says at face value. This is confirmed when Forrest begins detailing his life, which is peppered with stories about major events from history that he was apparently intimately involved in. We can’t be certain that he’s not telling the truth, but it would be quite the life if he is.

An unreliable narrator breaks the conventional relationship of trust between a reader and a storyteller. However, the key is that you don’t want to shatter that trust entirely, because you’re likely to lose the reader. Ensure your unreliable narrator has a clear purpose for being unreliable, employ just enough mist around the narrator’s accounts to put question marks in our minds, give us the underlying sense that there’s more to the story, and you’ll be able to foster a connection between the reader and narrator that has the pages of your book flipping.

Who are some of your favorite unreliable narrators from literature? Have you ever tried writing one yourself? Leave any thoughts or questions in the comments below!

2 responses

Hermione 11675 says:

08/05/2019 – 12:28

Who is the author of this article? I would like to cite it for a school paper if that's all right, but I need to know the author's name. -- California high school student

R. Raniere says:

26/10/2019 – 16:41

I disagree that all unreliable narrators are first-person narrators. Consider Lane Dean, Jr., the protagonist in David Foster Wallace's "Good People" in which the narrative voice is third-person limited. In this case the narrator is unreliable because the reader's understanding emerges from the thoughts and descriptions of Lane Dean alone, which are not entirely credible given his own lack of understanding of where he is vis-a-vis his Christian beliefs and values, and his leaning to see things as he would like, rather than as they may be. This leaves the reader to deal with a questionable resolution.

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Unreliable Narrator: Mastering the 8 Layers of Deceptive Storytelling

Table of Contents

There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as realizing that the story you’re engrossed in has an unreliable narrator . This tantalizing narrative technique introduces an unexpected layer of complexity and intrigue to the plot, challenging the reader to untangle truth from deception. An unreliable narrator can transform a straightforward storyline into a labyrinth of mystery and suspense, where each revelation might just be another illusion. But what is an unreliable narrator, and why has this narrative tool become so popular in literature and film? In this exploration, we’ll delve into the world of unreliable narrators, highlighting its potential pitfalls and immense rewards, with a special nod to the ghostwriting domain.

What is an Unreliable Narrator?

At its core, an unreliable narrator is a character who tells a story but whose credibility is compromised. This could be due to a variety of reasons, ranging from deliberate deception or omission to a lack of self-awareness or even mental instability. The concept fundamentally challenges the notion of objective truth in storytelling, inviting readers or viewers to question the reality presented to them.

Such a character brings a unique dynamic to the narrative, as the audience is left to interpret and judge the story’s events. They must discern fact from fiction, often revisiting their initial perceptions as new information or perspectives are revealed. This complex relationship between the narrator, the narrative, and the audience creates a sense of engagement and intellectual stimulation that can make stories with unreliable narrators especially memorable.

Fundamentally, an unreliable narrator disrupts the comfortable, often passive experience of consuming a story. Instead, it prompts us to become active participants, constantly questioning, doubting, and reassessing what we think we know. This interaction generates a level of suspense and engagement that can elevate a story, making it resonate long after the last page is turned or the final credits roll.

Why Use an Unreliable Narrator?

So, why would a writer choose to use an unreliable narrator? What benefits can this narrative strategy offer? To answer these questions, we need to delve deeper into the elements that make a story engaging and impactful.

Unpredictability is a key factor that keeps audiences engaged in a narrative. When we can’t predict what will happen next, we become more invested in the story. The unreliable narrator is a master of unpredictability. With their distorted perception or dishonest narration, they can continuously surprise the audience, ensuring that the plot remains intriguing throughout.

Moreover, the unreliable narrator encourages active engagement. In a conventional narrative, audiences usually accept the narrated events at face value. However, when dealing with an unreliable narrator, audiences are prompted to think more critically about the events and characters. They must piece together the true narrative from the clues and contradictions presented, fostering a deeper connection with the story.

An unreliable narrator can also add depth to a character. Their unreliability often stems from personal issues like mental illness, trauma, or moral ambiguity. By giving audiences glimpses of these underlying issues, the writer can create a more rounded and intriguing character.

But perhaps most compelling is the way the unreliable narrator reflects the complexity of truth and perception. It prompts audiences to question their understanding of reality, echoing the subjective nature of our own experiences and perceptions. This deeper, more philosophical engagement can make stories with unreliable narrators more memorable and thought-provoking.

When is the Use of an Unreliable Narrator Appropriate and When is it Not?

Employing an unreliable narrator can significantly amplify the intrigue and depth of a story. However, this tool isn’t suitable for all narratives. Understanding when to use this device—and when not to—is crucial to delivering an impactful story.

In stories aiming to generate suspense, create surprise twists, or delve into the psyche of a complex character, an unreliable narrator can work wonders. These narratives thrive on uncertainty and reap the benefits of active audience engagement. Stories addressing subjective experiences, memory, or the nature of truth also benefit from this narrative style, as the unreliable narrator inherently challenges the concept of a singular, objective truth.

On the other hand, stories that require a clear, consistent perspective may not benefit from an unreliable narrator. For instance, narratives that aim to educate or inform, such as historical accounts or instructional texts, require a dependable voice. Similarly, stories focusing on external conflicts rather than internal dynamics might be better served by a reliable narrator. An unreliable narrator might also be inappropriate in narratives targeting audiences that prefer a more straightforward, less ambiguous storytelling style.

An important factor to consider is that the use of an unreliable narrator requires skillful execution. Poorly handled, it can lead to reader or viewer frustration, confusion, and a sense of being “tricked” rather than engaged. Thus, it’s essential to consider whether the narrative and the writer are equipped to handle this intricate tool.

Unreliable Narrator in Movies

The use of an unreliable narrator isn’t confined to the written word. Many filmmakers have harnessed this technique to deliver unforgettable cinematic experiences. Below, we will delve into 10 movies that masterfully use unreliable narrators to create engaging, suspenseful narratives.

• “Fight Club” (1999): David Fincher’s cult classic employs an unreliable narrator to stunning effect. As the protagonist’s mental stability unravels, the audience grapples with a narrative filled with disorienting distortions and revelations.
• “The Sixth Sense” (1999): M. Night Shyamalan’s masterpiece takes advantage of the unreliable narrator to craft one of cinema’s most memorable twist endings. Throughout the film, we’re led to perceive the world from Dr. Malcolm Crowe’s perspective, only to be startled by the reality in the final scenes.
• “Gone Girl” (2014): This psychological thriller relies on two unreliable narrators to weave a complicated tale of deception and manipulation. The dueling narratives of Nick and Amy Dunne keep the audience questioning who to believe.
• “Memento” (2000): Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending thriller uses the unreliability of Leonard, who suffers from anterograde amnesia, to build an intricate narrative that unfolds in a non-linear fashion, leaving the audience piecing together fragments of truth.
• “Shutter Island” (2010): In this Martin Scorsese-directed mystery, the unreliable narration stems from the troubled mental state of the protagonist, leaving audiences constantly guessing about the truth of Ashecliffe Hospital.
• “American Psycho” (2000): The film dives deep into the disturbed mind of Patrick Bateman, whose narration is as unreliable as it is chilling. The line between reality and Bateman’s violent delusions is masterfully blurred, unsettling viewers and prompting debate about the film’s events.
• “Rashomon” (1950): This seminal film by Akira Kurosawa offers four conflicting accounts of the same event, pioneering the use of unreliable narrators in cinema and exploring the subjective nature of truth.
• “A Beautiful Mind” (2001): The story of brilliant mathematician John Nash grapples with his schizophrenia through the use of an unreliable narrator, with reality only unfolding as Nash comes to terms with his condition.
• “The Usual Suspects” (1995): In this neo-noir film, the enigmatic Verbal Kint spins a complex web of tales, leaving audiences questioning the truth behind the infamous Keyser Söze.
• “Primal Fear” (1996): The film employs an unreliable narrator to craft a shocking twist ending. The defendant Aaron, initially portrayed as innocent and naïve, leaves both the audience and his lawyer questioning what is real.

Using an unreliable narrator can create enthralling narratives that keep audiences guessing. However, like any narrative tool, its effectiveness is dependent on skillful execution. The films listed above exemplify the power of this narrative device when handled with finesse.

Unreliable Narrator in Books

Similarly, books have long embraced the use of unreliable narrators to create intricate, captivating narratives. The following are nine books that use this technique to great effect.

• “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger: The teenage protagonist, Holden Caulfield, is an emblem of adolescent rebellion and confusion. His account of events is colored by his strong emotions and immature perspective.
• “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn: In this psychological thriller, husband and wife, Nick and Amy, narrate alternating chapters, both proving to be unreliable as their marriage unravels.
• “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk: As in the film, the novel uses the unreliability of the protagonist’s narration to draw readers into a chaotic world of anarchy and rebellion.
• “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel: The story, narrated by Pi Patel, includes wild, fantastical elements that lead readers to question the veracity of his tale.
• “The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins: The novel’s main character, Rachel, is a severe alcoholic, and her blackouts lead to significant gaps in her narrative.
• “Atonement” by Ian McEwan: Narrator Briony Tallis, in her pursuit of atonement, crafts a story that may or may not reflect the real events, leaving readers questioning her account.
• “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis: Like its film adaptation, the novel uses Patrick Bateman’s unstable mental state to blur the line between reality and hallucination.
• “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe: This short story’s narrator, who is trying to convince the reader of his sanity, vividly describes a murder he committed, creating an unsettling reading experience.
• “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier: The nameless narrator’s account of life at Manderley is skewed by her feelings of inferiority and paranoia, which color her perception of Rebecca and Maxim de Winter.

The art of employing an unreliable narrator in literature provides readers with an interactive reading experience, causing them to question and actively engage with the text. However, like in film, this narrative tool must be carefully handled to prevent it from becoming a source of reader frustration.

Pros and Cons of Using Unreliable Narrators

Unreliable narrators can be a powerful literary and cinematic tool when employed correctly. However, they also come with a set of potential pitfalls.

• Reader Engagement: The use of an unreliable narrator can engage readers in the narrative as they are prompted to question and investigate the narrative presented to them. This increases their active participation in deciphering the plot and characters.
• Richness and Depth: Unreliable narrators allow for the creation of complex and multi-faceted characters. Their flaws, biases, and unique perspectives contribute to the depth and richness of the narrative.
• Plot Twists and Surprises: Unreliable narrators can be used to introduce plot twists, making for exciting, unpredictable storytelling. When the reliability of the narrator is brought into question, it opens up numerous possibilities for shocking reveals and twists.
• Reader Confusion and Frustration: If not handled carefully, an unreliable narrator can lead to confusion and frustration. Readers might feel misled or cheated if the unreliability is not signaled or managed properly.
• Complexity in Writing: Writing from the perspective of an unreliable narrator requires skill and delicacy. Balancing between maintaining reader trust and introducing doubt can be challenging.
• Lack of Closure: Stories with unreliable narrators might not have definitive conclusions, as the truth is often obscured or subjective. This can be unsatisfying for some readers who prefer a clear resolution.

Unreliable narrators indeed bring a unique dynamic to storytelling, enriching it with their personal biases, flawed perceptions, and occasionally, deliberate deceptions. However, their use comes with a set of challenges and potential pitfalls that writers must navigate carefully.

Wrapping Up the Unpredictability: The Unreliable Narrator

From the winding alleys of mysteries to the unsettling corners of psychological thrillers, from the surreal landscapes of magical realism to the gritty terrains of hard-boiled noir, the unreliable narrator is a versatile and powerful storytelling tool. Employed adeptly, it can lend a story layers of complexity, intrigue, and emotional depth.

The use of an unreliable narrator invites readers to step beyond the traditional role of a passive recipient of the story, compelling them to become active participants in the unfolding narrative. As they navigate the labyrinth of unreliable narration, readers must parse truth from falsehood, appearance from reality, and memory from fabrication. This engaged reading experience can make the narrative more memorable and impactful.

However, as with all powerful tools, the unreliable narrator comes with its challenges. Misused, it can breed confusion and frustration, alienate readers, and weaken the narrative structure. Therefore, it’s crucial for writers to strike a balance—enough uncertainty to stir intrigue, but not so much as to obscure the narrative.

In the hands of a skillful writer, an unreliable narrator is not merely a teller of tales but an enigma to be decoded, a mystery intertwined with the larger narrative mystery. This narrative strategy, while requiring careful handling, opens up a wealth of storytelling possibilities, breathing life into narratives and delivering reading experiences that resonate, surprise, and provoke thought.

To borrow a quote from the book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, an excellent example of the unreliable narrator, “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.” Indeed, the unreliable narrator blurs the line between fact and fiction, challenging us to question, seek, and understand – a testament to the transformative power of storytelling.

“Life of Pi” by Yann Martel and “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn are other masterpieces in the realm of literature that utilize the concept of an unreliable narrator masterfully. These are must-reads for anyone interested in understanding this narrative technique better.

So, the next time you encounter an unreliable narrator, remember to enjoy the journey through the labyrinth of their narrative, and appreciate the layers of complexity they add to the story. After all, isn’t life itself a tale told by an unreliable narrator?

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16 thoughts on “ Unreliable Narrator: Mastering the 8 Layers of Deceptive Storytelling ”

Thank you for helping me understand this kind of narrator. Thanks a lot for sharing.

When a storyteller can hook the readers, that is an amazing talent. something not easy to accomplish but very good. Interesting post and love that its also informative.

Its crazy where my head went when I first heard unreliable writer. Now it’s the only thing I want to be as a writer lol.

It is truly amazing how storytelling has the power to transform a narrative and engage readers. The technique adds layers of complexity that intrigue readers and make the story more interesting. However, using an unreliable narrator can be challenging. When handled with care, it can still be a powerful tool for writers.

Ah, this is so insightful! It takes a really clever writer to craft an unreliable narrator, and ti make it truly believable.

Shutter Island is a great example of an unreliable narrator! Especially with that shocker ending.

We had to read the Tell-tale Heart in high school, and then we went to see a theater production of it. The use of an unreliable narrator makes for a memorable story. The only other movies and books that you mention that I am familiar with include A Beautiful Mind, and Life of Pi. I would say that perhaps this isn’t my favorite form of storytelling, but now that I know what an unreliable narrator is, thanks to this article, I will be more willing seek out these types of stories.

Unreliable narrators add a captivating twist to storytelling! Mastering the art of deceptive storytelling with 8 layers opens up a world of intrigue and suspense.

I loved this article because I have always had questions about an unreliable narrator. First, I was trying to think of movies that had unreliable narrators, and I thought of Memento as an example. Oddly, I have not read very many books with unreliable narrators, but yes, Rebecca was a fine example for me. I was so young when I read The Catcher In The Rye and The Tell-Tale Heart, and my teachers never introduced us to the convention of the unreliable narrator, so I don’t remember thinking about that when I read them both. Now I especially need to go back and reread The Tell-Tale Heart and check it out! Thank you for this!

I love a good unreliable narrator, and I particularly enjoyed reading Rebecca. Your straightforward explanation is going to help me explain this craft to my students, thank you!

Great insight on unreliable narrators! Loved your exploration of its use in literature and film. Can’t wait for more thought-provoking analyses!

Reading this post has highlighted to me the differences between the different types of narrators. It’s very interesting how you have explained it and demonstrated how it’s used in different types of books and films.

I would definitely say that having an unreliable narrator is a unique spin. I never really thought about that before!

I have never read a book with an unreliable narrator and I am glad to learn more about them. Thank you!

Ooohhhh….thank you for educating me on this kind of narrator. It will be so cool to deploy them in dialogues, of my writing.

I’m very intrigued by this kind of story. I’ve never read a book with an unreliable narrator before, and I think it sounds pretty darn great.

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The Unreliable Narrator: Simplifying the Device and Exploring its Role in Autobiography

James Ferry , University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow

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Master of Arts (M.A.)

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Month degree awarded.

The primary goal of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the unreliable narrator as a literary device. Furthermore, I argue that the distance between an author and narrator in realist fiction can be simulated in autobiographical prose. While previous studies have focused mainly on extra- and intertextual incongruities (factual inaccuracies; disparities between two nonfiction texts), the present study attempts to demonstrate that the memoirist can employ unreliable narration intratexually as a rhetorical tool. The paper begins with some examples of how the unreliable narrator is used, interpreted, misused and misinterpreted. The device’s troubled history is examined—Wayne Booth and James Phelan have argued for an encoded strategy on the part of the (implied) author while Tamar Yacobi and Ansgar Nünning have embraced a reader-oriented model—as well as the recent (and in my opinion, inevitable) convergence of the rhetorical and cognitive/constructivist models. Aside from “What is the unreliable narrator,” two questions underlie the present study: 1) Does a fiction writer using homodiegetic narration have an obligation to adhere to formal mimeticism (do we believe it)? 2) Being that unreliable narrators are so prevalent in everyday life, why is the device, in nonfiction, considered almost verboten? Two texts are analyzed for the first question: Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is argued to be a mimetically successful fictive “memoir” penned by a disillusioned, albeit reliable, narrator. Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day is presented as a synthetically flawless example of unreliable narration, but alas, a mimetic failure. Likewise, two texts are analyzed for the second question: Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is viewed through the lens of overt fiction as a means of depicting uncertainty in autobiography. Similarly, Richard’s Wright’s Black Boy , with its overarching themes of survival and deception, is examined for the narrator’s use of “tall tales.” The critical and commercial success of both books suggests that the unreliable narrator does indeed have a place in autobiography—provided that the device is employed in service of a greater truth.

https://doi.org/10.7275/9500156

First Advisor

David Fleming

Second Advisor

Nicholas Bromell

Third Advisor

Janis Greve

Recommended Citation

Ferry, James, "The Unreliable Narrator: Simplifying the Device and Exploring its Role in Autobiography" (2017). Masters Theses . 463. https://doi.org/10.7275/9500156 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/463

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Reconceptualizing the Theory and Generic Scope of Unreliable Narration *

The paper argues that the concept "unreliable narrator" needs to be radically rethought because, as currently defined, it is terminologically imprecise and theoretically inadequate. The first part of the article is devoted to giving an assessment and critique of the standard notions of the unreliable narrator, arguing that the postulation of essentialized and anthropomorphized entities designated "unreliable narrator" and "implied author" ignore the complexity of the phenomena involved and stands in the way of a systematic exploration of the cognitive processes which result in the projection of unreliable narrators in the first place. The second part outlines a radical reconceptualization of unreliable narration. It is proposed that it would be more sensible to conceptualize the relevant phenomena in the context of frame theory as a projection by the reader who tries to resolve ambiguities and textual inconsistencies by attributing them to the narrator's "unreliability." In the context of frame theory, the reader's projection of "unreliable narrators" can be understood as an interpretive strategy or a cognitive process of the sort that has come to be known as "naturalization" (cf. Culler 1975; Fludernik 1993, 1996). A number of empirical frames of reference and literary models can be seen as standard modes of naturalization by means of which readers account for contradictions both within texts and between the world-model of texts and their empirical world-models. The final section gives a brief outline of the generic scope of unreliable narration, arguing that it is unjustifiable and counterproductive to limit the study of this phenomenon to narrative fiction

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1 Ever since Wayne C. Booth first proposed the unreliable narrator as a concept, it has been considered to be among the basic and indispensable categories of textual analysis. Hardly anyone to date has modified or challenged Booth's well-known formulation, which has become the canonized definition of the term: "I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say the implied author's norms), unreliable when he does not" (1961, 158-59). According to Booth, the distinction between reliable and unreliable narrators is based on "the degree and kind of distance" (155) that separates a given narrator from the implied author of a work. A comparison of the definitions provided in standard narratological works, in scholarly articles, and in glossaries of literary terms shows that the great majority of narratologists have followed Booth, providing almost identical definitions of the unreliable narrator.

2 What most critics seem to have forgotten, however, is that Booth himself freely admitted that the terminology for "this kind of distance in narrators is almost hopelessly inadequate" (1961, 158). There is indeed a peculiar discrepancy between the importance generally attributed to the question of reliability in narrative and the unresolved issues surrounding the concept of the unreliable narrator: "There can be little doubt about the importance of the problem of reliability in narrative and in literature as a whole.... [But] the problem is (predictably) as complex and (unfortunately) as ill-defined as it is important" (Yacobi, 1981, 113). Booth's canonical definition does not really make for clarity but rather sets the fox to keep the geese, as it were, since it falls back on the ill-defined and elusive notion of the implied author, which hardly provides a reliable basis for determining a narrator's unreliability.

3 The thesis of this article is that the concept of the unreliable narrator needs to be radically rethought because, as currently defined, it is terminologically imprecise and theoretically inadequate. The postulation of essentialized and anthropomorphized entities designated "unreliable narrator" and "implied author" ignores the complexity of the phenomena involved and stands in the way of a systematic exploration of the cognitive processes which result in the projection of unreliable narrators in the first place. It would arguably be more adequate to conceptualize unreliable narration in the context of frame theory as a projection by the reader who tries to resolve ambiguities and textual inconsistencies by attributing them to the narrator's "unreliability". In the context of frame theory, the invention of "unreliable narrators" can be understood as an interpretative strategy or cognitive process of the sort that has come to be known as "naturalization." 1 Paraphrasing one of Malcolm Bradbury's observations in Mensonge, his hilarious satire on deconstruction, I would like to suggest that it is high time to dismantle many of the premises of realist theories of unreliable narration, and to convert the foundations of some others.

4 The first part of the article is devoted to giving an assessment and critique of the standard notions of the unreliable narrator. The second part outlines a radical reconceptualization of unreliable narration. It is argued that a number of empirical frames of reference and literary models serve as the modes of naturalization by means of which readers (like critics and most theorists of unreliable narration) account for contradictions both within texts and between the world-model of texts and their empirical world-models. The third part gives a brief outline of the generic scope of unreliable narration, arguing that it is unjustifiable and counter-productive to limit the study of this phenomenon to narrative fiction. The final section will then provide a brief summary and suggest that much more work needs to be done in this particular field of narratology.

I. A critique of conventional theories of unreliable narration

5 A brief look at conventional accounts of the concept "unreliable narrator" may be in order so as to distinguish the approach argued for in this essay from the general approach in narratology. Let us begin by asking just what it is that we know about the mysterious unreliable narrator and by presenting a critique of traditional theories of unreliable narration against the background of five hypotheses.

6 The definition provided by Gerald Prince in his Dictionary of Narratology will suffice to indicate what is usually meant by the term "unreliable narrator": "A narrator whose norms and behavior are not in accordance with the implied author's norms; a narrator whose values (tastes, judgments, moral sense) diverge from those of the implied author's; a narrator the reliability of whose account is undermined by various features of that account" (Prince, 1987, 101). Despite the good job Prince does in summarizing the communis opinio on the subject, this definition of the concept comprises an unholy mixture of vagueness and tautology. Nonetheless, most theorists and critics who have written on the unreliable narrator take the implied author both for granted and for the only standard according to which unreliability can be determined.

7 One of the central problems in defining unreliable narration is the unresolved question of what standards allow the critic to recognize an unreliable narrator. The usual answer to the question "Unreliable, compared to what?" is woefully inadequate and untenable, because it specifies just one basis for recognizing the narrrator's unreliability, namely the ill-defined concept of the implied author. The trouble with all of the definitions that are based on the implied author is that they try to define unreliability by relating it to a concept that is itself ill-defined and paradoxical. Curiously enough, however, even the most sophisticated recent articles retain the notion of the implied author. In what are arguably the best critiques of orthodox theories of unreliable narration to date, the articles of Tamar Yacobi (1981, 1987) and Kathleen Wall (1994), the authors hold on to the implied author as though he, or rather it, was the only possible way of accounting for unreliable narration.

8 Critics who argue that a narrator's unreliability is to be gauged in comparison to the norms of the implied author just shift the burden of determination onto a critical catch-all term that is itself notoriously ill-defined. The tenacity with which narratologists have clung to the implied author in their attempts at defining unreliability suggests, as Mieke Bal (1981b, 209) observes, that the implied author is "a remainder category, a kind of passepartout that serves to clear away all the problematic remainders of a theory." Introducing the implied author has certainly not managed to clear away the problems of defining unreliable narration.

9 Some narratologists have pointed out that the concept of the implied author does not provide a reliable basis for determining a narrator's unreliability. Not only are "the values (or 'norms') of the implied author... notoriously difficult to arrive at," as Rimmon-Kenan (1983, 101) observes, but the implied author is itself a very elusive and opaque notion. One might go much further than Rimmon-Kenan and suggest that the implied author's norms are impossible to establish and that the concept of the implied author is dispensable.

10 From a theoretical point of view, the concept of the implied author is also problematic because it creates the illusion that it is a matter of a purely textual phenomenon. But it is obvious from many of the definitions that the implied author is a construct established by the reader on the basis of the whole structure of a text. When Chatman (1990, 77) writes that "we might better speak of the 'inferred' than of the 'implied' author," he implicitly concedes that one is dealing with something that has to be worked out by the reader. Being a structural phenomenon that is voiceless, the implied author must be seen "as a construct inferred and assembled by the reader from all the components of the text" (Rimmon-Kenan, 1983, 87). Toolan has made the sensible suggestion that one should look at the implied author not as a speaker but as a component of the reception process, as the reader's idea of the author: "The implied author is a real position in narrative processing, a receptor's construct, but it is not a real role in narrative transmission. It is a projection back from the decoding side, not a real projecting stage on the encoding side" (1988, 78).

11 The most controversial aspect of the concept of the implied author is that it carries far-reaching, though largely unacknowledged theoretical implications. First, the concept of the implied author reintroduces the notion of authorial intention, though through the backdoor. As Chatman (1990, 77) has pointed out, "the concept of implied authorship arose in the debate about the relevance of authorial intention to interpretation." Providing "a new link to the sphere of the actual author and authorial values" (York, 1987, 166; cf. Yacobi, 1987), the implied author turns out to be little more than a terminologically presentable way of making it possible to talk again about the author's intention: "The concept of 'the implied author', with its air of being an inference from the work and thus as it were, like plot, an objective feature of the work, enables Booth to talk about the author under the guise of still appearing to talk about the work" (Baker, 1972/73, 204f.; cf. also Juhl, 1980, 203). Second, representing the work's norms and values, the implied author is intended to serve both as a yardstick for a moralistic kind of criticism and as a check on the potentially boundless relativism of interpretation. Third, the use of the definite article and the singular misleadingly suggest that there is only one correct interpretation: "The very fact that Booth and Chatman speak of the implied author already implies, suggests the existence of one ideal interpretation of the narrative text" (Berendsen, 1984, 148). In short, the concept of the implied author appears to provide the critic again with a basis for judging both the acceptability of an author's "moral position," about which, according to Booth, a writer "has an obligation to be as clear [...] as he possibly can be" (1961, 389), and the correctness of an interpretation.

12 The lack of terminological clarity and the problematic theoretical implications associated with the notion of the implied author have led some narratologists to argue that the concept should be abandoned. 2 Some theorists have recognized that it has not fulfilled the promise "to account for the ideology of the text" (Bal, 1981a, 42) and is not capable of doing what it was supposed to do: "It not only adds another narrating subject to the heap but it fails to resolve what it sets out to bridge: the author-narrator relationship" (Lanser, 1981, 49f.).

13 Whether or not narratolgy is really well served with such a problematic concept as the implied author, be it of the personalized and anthropomorphicized or the depersonified variety, is an open question. Recently, some prominent narratologists have again emphatically come out in favour of the implied author, while others have argued just as strongly against the concept. 3 But given the fact that phenomena like norms and values, structure, and meaning are central problems in literary criticism and will continue to occupy the attention of theorists and critics alike, they probably should not be allowed to disappear behind a concept like the implied author, which is ill-defined and potentially misleading. As I hope to show below, the implied author is neither a necessary nor a sufficient standard by which to determine a narrator's putative unreliability.

14 Despite what common sense would appear to tell us, definition is a problem with the unreliable narrator because most theories leave unclear what unreliability is and whether it involves moral or epistemological shortcomings. Most definitions in the wake of Booth have emphasized that unreliability consists of a moral distance between the norms of the implied or real author and those articulated by the narrator while other theorists have pointed out that what is at stake is not a question of moral norms but of the veracity of the account a narrator gives (cf. Toolan, 1988, 88).

15 In most work on the unreliable narrator, it is also unclear whether unreliability is primarily meant to designate a matter of misrepresenting the events of the story or whether it consists of the narrator's dubious judgments or interpretations. Rimmon-Kenan's (1983, 100) definition is a case in point. She simply leaves open whether unreliability is to be gauged in comparison to the accuracy of the narrator's account of the story or to his or her commentary and judgments: "An unreliable narrator... is one whose rendering of the story and/or commentary on it the reader has reasons to suspect." The "and/or"-construction sounds very open and flexible, but this is a bit too nonchalant. Most would agree that it does make a difference whether we have an deviant narrator who provides a sober and factually veracious account of the most egregious or horrible events, which, from his point of view, are hardly noteworthy, or a normal narrator who is just a bit slow on the uptake and whose flawed interpretations of what is going on revéal that he is a benighted fool. 4 Lanser (1981, 170ff.) provides an answer to the question of how we may classify narrators "with respect to 'reliability'" by positing three axes between the poles "dissimulation vs. honesty", "unreliability vs. reliability" and "narrative incompetence vs. narrative skill."

16 Conventional theories of unreliable narration are methodologically unsatisfactory as well because they either leave unclear how the narrator's unreliability is apprehended in the reading process or they provide only highly metaphorical and vague explanations of it. The metaphors that Chatman uses in order to explain how the reader detects the narrator's unreliability are a case in point. He resorts to what is arguably one of the two most popular metaphors in this context — that of "reading between the lines." Chatman (1978, 233) argues that readers "conclude, by 'reading out,' between the lines, that the events and existente could not have been 'like that,' and so we hold the narrator suspect." Leaving aside for the moment that the repeated use of inverted commas in definitions is not particularly reassuring, I just wish to suggest that such observations fail to shed much light on how a narrator's unreliability is apprehended in the reading process.

17 The second metaphor that critics and theorists continually employ in order to account for unreliable narration is that something is going on "behind the narrator's back" (cf. Riggan, 1981, 13; Yacobi, 1981, 125). Chatman (1978, 233), for instance, suggests that the implied author establishes "a secret communication with the implied reader. Riggan (1981, 13) not only uses almost exactly the same phrase, but he also states quite unequivocally that "the presence of the implied author's hand is always discernible behind the narrator's back" (77). He does not, however, bother to enlighten the uninitiated as to how the hand of the omnipresent implied author behind the narrator's back may in fact be discerned. Such metaphors, though vivid, provide only very opaque explanations of unreliable narration. From a methodological and theoretical point of view, they amount to nothing more than a declaration of bankruptcy. With regard to the question of how readers know an unreliable narrator when they see one, these metaphors are unenlightening.

18 To explain the mechanisms that stand behind the impression that a narrator is unreliable, it is not necessary to postulate an implied author but simply to have recourse to the concept of structural or dramatic irony (cf. Booth 1961, 255). The structure of unreliable narration can be explained in terms of dramatic irony and discrepant awareness because it involves a contrast between a narrator's view of the fictional world and the contrary state of affairs which the reader can grasp. The reader interprets what the narrator says in two quite different contexts. On the one hand, the reader is exposed to what the narrator wants and means to say. On the other hand, the statements of the narrator take on additional meaning for the reader, meaning that the narrator is not conscious of and does not intend to convey. Without being aware of it, unreliable narrators continually give the reader indirect information about their idiosyncrasies and states of mind. The peculiar effects of unreliable narration result from the conflict between the narrator s report of the facts" on the level of the story and his own interpretations. The narrative not only informs the reader of the narrator s version of events, it also provides him or her with indirect information about what presumably "really happened" and about the narrator's frame of mind.

19 If one gives up the notion of the implied author, then it is necessary to modify Booth's (1961, 74) explanations of the unreliable narrator in such a way as is already suggested by his definition of the implied author as "the core of norms and choices." Unreliable narrators are those whose perspective is in contradiction with the value and norm system of the whole text or with that of the reader. The phenomenon of unreliable narration can be seen as the result of discrepant awareness and dramatic irony.

20 The general effect of what is called unreliable narration consists of redirecting the reader's attention from the level of the story to the speaker and of foregrounding peculiarities of the narrator's psychology. Wall (1994, 23) argues very convincingly that unreliable narration "refocuses the reader's attention on the narrator's mental processes." What is needed therefore is a more systematic exploration of the relation between unreliability and characterization. In the only available article on the subject, Dan Shen (1989, 309) has shown that "deviations in terms of reliability may have a significant role to play in revealing or reinforcing narratorial stance" and "in characterizing a particular consciousness." In unreliable narration it is often very difficult to determine whether what the narrator says provides facts about the fictional world or only clues to his distorted and evaluating consciousness. Consequently, the answer to the question "reliable, compared to what?" may vary dramatically depending on whether the standard according to which we gauge the potential unreliability of the narrator involves the events or the narrator's subjective view of them.

21 In sum, the link that theorists have forged between the unreliable narrator and the implied author deprives narratology of the possibility of accounting for the pragmatic effects subsumed under the term of unreliable narration. The critic accounts for whatever incongruousness s/he may have detected by reading the text as an instance of dramatic irony and by projecting an unreliable narrator as an integrative hermeneutic device. Culler (1975, 157) has clarified what is involved here: "At the moment when we propose that a text means something other than what it appears to say we introduce, as hermeneutic devices which are supposed to lead us to the truth of the text, models which are based on our expectations about the text and the world." This, of course, raises the questions of what kind of models are involved in the cognitive processes that lead to the projection of an unreliable narrator.

II. Reconceptualizing conventional theories of unreliable narration

22 Heeding Harker's (1989) call for a radical reorientation, I will try to outline a model-oriented approach to how texts that display features of unreliable narration are read. 5 I will contend that we can define unreliable narration neither as a structural nor as a semantic aspect of the textbase alone, but only by taking into account the conceptual frameworks that readers bring to the text. If we are to make sense of unreliable narration at all, it would be wise to begin by looking at the standards according to which critics think they recognize an unreliable narrator when they see one.

23 Determining whether a narrator is unreliable is not just an innocent descriptive statement but a subjectively tinged value-judgment or projection governed by the normative presuppositions and moral convictions of the critic, which as a rule remain unacknowledged. Critics concerned with unreliable narrators recuperate textual inconsistencies by relating them to accepted cultural models. Recent work on unreliable narration confirms Culler's hypothesis about the impact of realist and referential notions for the generation of literary effects. Culler (1975, 144) argues that "most literary effects, particularly in narrative prose, depend on the fact that readers will try to relate what the text tells them to a level of ordinary human concerns, to the actions and reactions of characters constructed in accordance with models of integrity and coherence."

24 Riggan's monograph on the unreliable first-person narrator provides a case in point. Despite its insights into a broad range of texts, it suffers from all of the theoretical shortcomings outlined above. A look at Riggan's typology of unreliable narrators provides insight into the basic mechanisms that are involved in the projection of an unreliable narrator. Riggan distinguishes four types of such narrators, which he designates as "picaros," "madmen," "naïfs," and "clowns."

25 These typological distinctions can best be understood as a way of relating the text to accepted cultural models or to literary conventions. What critics like Riggan are doing is integrating previously held world-knowledge with textual data or even imposing preexisting conceptual models on the text. The models used to account for unreliable narration provide a context which resolves textual inconsistencies and makes the respective novels intelligible in terms of culturally prevalent frames.

26 It is these models which determine the perception of narrators designated as "unreliable," and not the other way round. The information on which the projection of an unreliable narrator is based derives at least as much from within the mind of the beholder as from textual data. In other words: whether a narrator is called unreliable or not does not depend on the distance between the norms and values of the narrator and those of the implied author, but between the distance that separates the narrator's view of the world from the reader's or critic's world-model and standards of normalcy, which are themselves, of course, open to challenge. It is thus necessary to make explicit that customary presuppositional framework on which theories of unreliable narration have hitherto been based.

27 An analysis of the presuppositional framework on which most theories of unreliable narration rest is overdue, since research into unreliable narration has been based on a number of highly questionable conceptual presuppositions, which as a rule remain implicit and unacknowledged. The general notion of unreliability presupposes some sort of standard for establishing whether or not the facts or interpretations provided by a narrator may be held suspect. The violations of norms which interest critics and theorists "are only made possible by norms which," as Culler (1975, 160) wittily observes, "they have been too impatient to investigate in detail." These presuppositions about unreliable narration need to be made explicit and clarified because they provide the key for reconceptualizing unreliability.

28 Among these underlying (and unwarranted) presuppositions on which the concept of unreliable narration relies, one might distinguish between epistemological and ontological premises, assumptions that are rooted in a liberal humanist view of literature, and psychological, moral, and linguistic norms — all of which are based on stylistic and other deviational models. An analysis of the presuppositional framework on which most theories of unreliable narration are based reveals that the orthodox concept of the unreliable narrator is a curious amalgam of a realist epistemology and a mimetic view of literature.

29 The epistemological and ontological premises consist of realist and by now doubtful notions of objectivity and truth. More specifically, the notion of unreliability presupposes that an objective view of the world, of others, and of oneself can be attained. In contrast to the ideal of objective self-obervation, it needs to be emphasized that "a maximally objective view of oneself can be attained only by others" (Fludernik, 1993, 53). The concept of unreliable narration also implies that human beings are principally taken to be capable of providing veracious accounts of events, proceeding from the assumption that "an authoritative version of events" (Wall, 1994, 37) can in principle be established or retrieved.

30 Theories of narrational unreliability also tend to rely on realist and mimetic notions of literature. The concept of the unreliable narrator is based on what Yacobi (1981, 119) has aptly called "a quasi-human model of a narrator" and, one might add, on an equally anthropomorphized model of the implied author. Amoros (1991, 42) has provided a convincing critique of this general tendency of allocating human features to the narrative agent.

31 In addition, theories of narrational unreliability are also heavily imbued with a wide range of unacknowledged notions that are based on stylistic deviation models or on more general notions of deviation from some norm or other. The notion of unreliability presupposes some default value which is taken to be unmarked "reliability." This is usually left undefined and merely taken for granted. Most critics agree, however, that reliability is indeed the default value (cf. Martinez-Bonati, 1981). Lanser (1981, 171), for instance, argues that "the conventional degrees zero [are] rather close to the poles of authority," and Riggan (1981, 19) observes that "our natural tendency is to grant our speaker the full credibility possible within the limitations of human memory and capability." To my knowledge, Wall is the first theorist of unreliable narration who sheds some light on the presuppositions on which this "reliable counterpart" of the unreliable narrator rests when she argues that the reliable narrator "is the 'rational, self-present subject of humanism,' who occupies a world in which language is a transparent medium that is capable of reflecting a 'real' world."

32 Vague and ill-defined though this norm of reliability may be, it supplies the standard according to which narrational unreliability is gauged. If one takes a close look at the presuppositional framework on which theories of unreliable narration are based, one can further elucidate the assumption that an unreliable narrator departs from certain norms. What is involved here are various sets of ill-defined and usually unacknowledged norms, which can, however, theoretically be distinguished.

33 One of these sets of norms includes all those notions that are usually referred to as "common sense." Another set encompasses those standards that a given culture holds to be constitutive of normal psychological behaviour. Thirdly, the habit of discussing the stylistic peculiarities of unreliable narrators shows that linguistic norms also play a role in determining how far a given narrator deviates from some implied default. Finally, many critics seem to think that there are agreed-upon moral and ethical standards that are often used as frames of reference when the question of the possible unreliability of a narrator is raised.

34 One of the main problems with all of these tacit presuppositions based on unacknowledged norms and notions of deviation is that the establishment of norms is much more difficult than critics want to make us believe. Fludernik (1993, 349), for instance, argues that the "explicatory power of stylistic deviation breaks down at the point where one can no longer establish a norm, or where deviations from the norm are no longer empirically perceptible."

35 In both critical practice and theoretical work on unreliable narration, however, these different sets of norms are usually not explicitly set out but merely introduced in passing, and they seldom if ever receive any theoretical examination. Let me give one typical example: in what is the only book-length study of the unreliable first-person narrator, Riggan (1981, 36), for instance, suggests that the narrator's unreliability may be revealed by the "unacceptability of his [moral] philosophy in terms of normal moral standards or of basic common sense and human decency." By saying this, he lets the cat out of the bag in a way that is very illuminating indeed.

36 Phrases like these unwittingly reveal the real standards according to which critics decide whether a narrator may be unreliable: It is not the norms and values of the implied author, whoever or wherever that phantom may be, that provide the critic with the yardstick for determining how abnormal, indecent, immoral or perverse a given narrator is, but "normal moral standards," "basic common sense" and "human decency" — in other words: unreliable, not in comparison to the implied author, but unreliable in comparison to what the critic takes to be "normal moral standards" and "common sense."

37 The trouble with seemingly self-explanatory yardsticks like "normal moral standards" and "basic common sense" is that no generally accepted standard of normality exists which can serve as the basis for impartial judgments. In a pluralist, postmodernist, and multicultural age like ours it has become more difficult than ever before to determine what may count as "normal moral standards" and "human decency." In other words: a narrator may be perfectly reliable compared to one critic's notions of moral normality but quite unreliable in comparison to those held other people. To put it quite bluntly: a pederast would not find anything wrong with Lolita; a male chauvinist fetishist who gets his kicks out of making love to dummies is unlikely to detect any distance between his norms and those of the mad monologuist in Ian McEwan's "Dead As They Come"; and someone used to watching his beloved mother disposing of unwelcome babies would not even find the stories collected in Ambrose Bierce's "The Parenticide Club" in any way objectionable.

38 There are a number of definable textual clues to unreliability, and what is needed is a more subtle and systematic account of these signals. 6 Unreliable narrators tend to be marked by a number of textual inconsistencies. These may range from internal contradictions within their discourse over discrepancies between their utterances and actions (cf. Riggan, 1981, 36, who calls this "a gaping discrepancy between his conduct and the moral views he propounds"), to those inconsistencies that result from multiperspectival accounts of the same event (cf. Rimmon-Kenan, 1983, 101; Toolan, 1988, 88).

39 The range of clues to unreliability that Wall (1994, 19) simply refers to as "verbal tics" or "verbal habits of the narrator" (20) can and should be further differentiated by specifying the linguistic expressions of subjectivity. Due to the close link between subjectivity, on the one hand, and the effect called unreliability, on the other, the virtually exhaustive account of categories of expressivity and subjectivity that Fludernik (1993, 227-279) has provided are also extremely useful for drawing up a list of grammatical signals of unreliability, which can be further differentiated in terms of the linguistic expressions of subjectivity. The "establishment" of a reading in terms of "unreliable narration" frequently depends on the linguistic and stylistic evocation of a narrator's subjectivity or cognitive limitations (cf. Fludernik, 1993, 280).

40 Despite the above list of textual clues to unreliability, it needs to be emphasized that the problem of unreliable narration cannot be resolved on the basis of textual data alone. In addition to these intratextual signals, the reader also draws on extratextual frames of reference in his or her attempt to gauge the narrator's potential degree of unreliability. The term "unreliable narrator" does not designate a structural or semantic feature of texts, but a pragmatic phenomenon that cannot be fully grasped without taking into account the conceptual premises that readers and critics bring to texts. Consequently, it seems doubtful whether the term unreliable narrator can be defined, as Zimmermann (1995, 61) has recently maintained, solely on the basis of what she calls "intratextual dissonances."

41 What is needed instead is a pragmatic and cognitive framework that takes into consideration the world-model or conceptual information previously existing in the mind of reader or critic. It is necessary to take into consideration both the world-model and norms in the mind of the reader and the interplay between textual and extratextual information. Coming to grips with narrational unreliability is impossible if one conceives reading as being a mere "'bottom-up' or data-driven process" just as if one conceives it as being nothing but "a 'top-down' or conceptually driven process" (Harker, 1989, 471).

42 Developing a viable theory of unreliable narration that accounts for the complex meaning effects subsumed under the concept of unreliable narration presupposes an "interactive model of the reading process" (Harker, 1989, 471) and a reader-oriented pragmatic or cognitive framework (cf. Fludernik, 1993, 51). It is only within an interactive model of the reading process that an adequate theory of unreliable narration can be elaborated. Fludernik's (1993, 353) explanation of irony illuminates how this might be conceptualized: "textual contradictions and inconsistencies alongside semantic infelicities, or discrepancies between utterances and action (in the case of hypocrisy), merely signal the interpretational incompatability... which then requires a recuperatory move on the reader's part — aligning the discrepancy with an intended higher-level significance: irony."

43 An interactive model of the reading process alerts theorists of unreliable narration that the projection of an unreliable narrator depends upon both textual information and extratextual conceptual information located in the reader's mind (cf. Harker, 1989, 476). Detaching the text from the reader and ignoring the world-models in the reader's mind has resulted in the aporias outlined above. On the other hand, one should beware of throwing the baby out with the bathwater by rejecting textual data as a legitimate basis for explaining unreliable narration.

44 Pragmatics and frame theory present a possible way out of the methodological and theoretical problems that most theories of unreliable narration suffer from because cognitive theories can shed light on the way in which readers naturalize texts that are taken to display features of narrational unreliability. To offer a reading of a narrative text in terms of unreliable narration can be thought of as a way of naturalizing textual inconsistencies by giving them a function in some larger pattern supplied by accepted cultural models. Culler (1975, 138) clarifies what "naturalization" means in this context: "to naturalize a text is to bring it into relation with a type of discourse or model which is already, in some sense, natural or legible." The concept of unreliable narration, for instance, provides the reader with a general framework which allows him or her to "treat anything anomalous as the effect of the narrator's vision or cast of mind" (Culler, 1975, 200). To my knowledge, Wall (1994, 30) is the only theorist to date who has at least briefly discussed the relation between naturalization and unreliable narration: "Part of the way in which we arrive at suspicions that the narrator is unreliable, then, is through the process of naturalizing the text, using what we know about human psychology and history to evaluate the probable accuracy of, or motives for, a narrator's assertions." She is certainly also right when she suggests that this kind of naturalization "is so much a part of our reading strategy with respect to both characters and narrators that, in all probability, we do not notice it."

45 Noticing and clarifying those unacknowledged frames of reference provides the clue to reconceptualizing the whole notion of unreliable narration. The question of whether a narrator is described as unreliable or not needs to be gauged in relation to various frames of reference. More particularly, one might distinguish between schemata derived from everyday experience and those that result from knowledge of literary conventions. 7

46 A first referential framework should be based on the readers 'empirical experience and criteria of verisimilitude. These frames depend on the referentiality of the text, the assumption that the text refers to or is at least compatible with the so-called real world. Whether a narrator is taken to be reliable or not depends, among other things, on such referential frameworks as the reader's or critic's

• general world-knowledge,
• historical world-model or cultural codes, 8
• explicit theories of personality or implicit models of psychological coherence and human behaviour, 9
• knowledge of the social, moral or linguistic norms relevant for the period in which a text was written and published (cf. Yacobi, 1987),
• the reader's or critic's psychological disposition, and system of norms and values.

47 Whether a narrator is taken to be reliable or not depends, among other things, on such referential frameworks as the reader's general world-knowledge. Deviations from what is usually referred to as "common sense" or general world-knowledge may indicate that the narrator is unreliable. Secondly, narrators who violate the standards that a given culture holds to be constitutive of normal psychological behaviour are generally taken to be unreliable. What is involved here is psychological theories of personality or implicit models of normal human behaviour. In order to gauge the potential unreliablity of the fictitious child-molester Humbert Humbert, the narrator of Nabokov's Lolita (1955), it does not suffice to look at textual data alone, because the process of character constitution during the reading process is inevitably influenced by the reader's implied personality theory, as Grabes (1996) has convincingly demonstrated. Thirdly, generally agreed-upon moral and ethical standards are often used as frames of reference when the question of the possible unreliability of a narrator is raised.

48 When a narrative text violates one or several of these normative presuppositions, the reader can always resort to one of these frames of reference in order to naturalize the text. As the reader relates discrepancies to these frames of reference, he or she brings the text into a context of coherence. Note that the choice of a particular frame of reference brings about a change in the mode of reading.

49 A second set of models brought into play in order to gauge a narrator's possible unreliability involves a number of specifically literary frames of reference. These include, for example:

• general literary conventions (cf. Amorόs, 1991),
• conventions and models of literary genres, 10
• intertextual frames of reference — that is, references to specific pre-texts,
• stereotyped models of characters such as the picaro, the miles gloriosus, the trickster,
• and last but not least the structure and norms established by the respective work itself.

50 The generic framework determines in part which criteria are used when a narrator's potential unreliability is gauged (cf. Yacobi, 1987, 20f.). A narrator that is considered to be unreliable in psychological or realistic terms may appear quite reliable if the text belongs to the genre of science fiction.

51 Both the concept of unreliable narration and the various types of unreliable narrators that have been proposed can be seen as modes of naturalization. These are based on widely accepted cultural frames which not only link a high number of disparate items, but also resolve whatever conflicts he or she may have noticed. The reader can try to account for textual inconsistencies by reading the text as the utterance of an obtuse, morally peculiar, or psychologically disturbed (i. e., unreliable) narrator. In this process, accepted cultural models of "deviant" but plausible human attitudes or behaviour are made use of, and the text begins to become naturalized.

52 The postulation of an unreliable narrator can be understood as a "mechanism of integration" (Yacobi, 1981, 119) in that it resolves whatever textual contradictions or discrepancies between the textual data and the reader's world-knowledge there may have been and leads to a synthesis at a higher level. Although relying on the implied and/or real author as the ultimate reference-point on which "reliability-judgments performed by the reader" (Yacobi, 1987, 22) depend, Yacobi (1987, 24f.) comes to a similar conclusion: "The hypothesis of a fictional reporter's unreliability is a mechanism for reconciling textual incongruities by appeal to a deliberate tension between the viewpoint of this informant (a character, narrator, dialogist, monologist) and that of the implied author who created him for his own purposes." In calling the source from which the utterances emanate an unreliable narrator, the critic not only makes peculiar features readily intelligible, but she or he also specifies how the text as a whole should be read. In the pragmatic context provided by frame theory unreliable narration can be explained as "an interpretive procedure" (Yacobi, 1981, 121): "as the result of interpretative work brought to bear on the juxtaposition between the wording of the text and the (by implication incompatible) cultural or textual norms of the text as constructed by the reader or implied as values shared by the reader and the realistic textual world" (Fludernik, 1993, 440; emphasis added). Conceived in this way, the projection of an unreliable narrator is not only informed by textual data, as Chatman and other proponents of the implied author would like to make us believe, but also by the conceptual models or frames previously existing in the mind of the reader or critic.

III. Reconceptualizing the generic scope of unreliable narration

53 So far, the focus of the discussion of unreliable narration — not just in the present article, but in literary studies at large — has been almost exclusively on narrative fiction (cf. Jahn 1998). The generic scope of the phenomenon in question, however, extends far beyond first-person narrators in novels or short stories. The following brief outline of the broader generic scope of unreliable narration will have to be provisional and programmatic because no general overview of the subject is currently available.

54 Just as the history of unreliable narration does not begin with modern fiction, the use of unreliable narrators is also not confined to narrative fiction; it rather extends to a wider range of genres. The subgenres known as the dramatic monologue (cf. Bennett, 1987) and the memory play (cf. Brunkhorst, 1980) are cases in point. These hybrid genres cut across established generic categories of poetry, drama, and narrative: with its limitation to a single speaker usually revealing key episodes of his or her life, the dramatic monologue combines poetic diction with dramatic presentation and story-telling elements; similarly, the memory play is a type of drama with distinct narrative features.

55 The dramatic monologues of nineteenth-century English literature provide ample evidence of the use of unreliable narration in poetry. There are many noteworthy examples of such unreliable narration in Victorian poetry, the most famous of which are probably Browning's "My Last Duchess" (1842) and Tennyson's Maud: A Monodrama (1855). Both structurally and thematically, these poems display almost all of the features of unreliable narration that have been discussed: they involve first-person speakers whose disturbed perceptions, egotistic personalities, and problematic value-systems lead the reader to question the accuracy of their accounts. In Maud the monologuist's strong bias results from a high degree of emotional involvement, from his divided loyalties, and from his overt partiality. Similarly, the speaker of Browning's "The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church" (1845) is an unreliable narrator if ever there was one. The bishop unwittingly reveals that he has fathered several bastards and that even on his deathbed he is thinking of nothing other than material wealth and sexual joy. The study of a host of other Victorian poems — e. g. Browning's "Porphyrias Lover" (1836) and John Davidson's "The Testament of an Empire-Builder" (1902) — and of many of Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads would also benefit from the application of the conceptual tools developed for the analysis of unreliable narration.

56 The same is true for the "memory play," which typically features an unreliable first-person narrator. Many post-war English plays prove those critics and theorists wrong who, like Elam (1980, 111), maintain that drama is "without narratorial mediation." However, the study of both unreliable narration and point of view or focalisation in drama has received hardly any attention to date. In the only available article on the subject, Brian Richardson (1988, 194) has convincingly shown that the deployment of narratorial mediation and the appearance of unreliability in plays call "for the kind of analysis of point of view usually reserved for modern fiction."

57 Such memory plays as Tom Stoppard's Travesties (1974) and Peter Shaffer's Amadeus (1979), which feature Henry Carr and Antonio Salieri respectively as narrators, demonstrate that post-war English playwrights make very subtle use of unreliable narration. In the stage directions of his play, Stoppard explicitly draws attention to Carr's unreliability, something which results from the old man's poor memory and his reactionary prejudices: "the scene (and most of the play) is under the erratic control of Old Carr's memory, which is not notably reliable, and also of his various prejudices and delusions" (Stoppard, 1974, 27). The main reasons for Salieri's unreliability are his limited knowledge, the high degree of his emotional involvement, and his problematic valuesystem. In Amadeus dramatic irony results primarily from the tension between what the audience sees and what Salieri describes, while Travesties contains a wide range of textual clues to Carr's unreliability. 11

58 Like many contemporary English novels, these memory plays call into question conventional notions of unreliable narration because they question the existence of a fundamental difference between "reliable" and "unreliable" narration (cf. Wall, 1994, 23). The fact that many recent English novels and plays challenge realist notions of truth and objectivity seems to confirm Wall's (1994, 37) view that we perhaps "need to re-think entirely our notion that unreliable narrators give an inaccurate version of events and that our task is to figure out 'what really happened'." It could be argued that the unreliable first-person speakers in plays such as Beckett's Play or Stoppard's Travesties, and novels such as Julian Barnes' Talking It Over or Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day are ultimately not at all unreliable: the stories they tell may not provide objective renderings of events, but they depict, in a very truthful way, the illusions and self-deceptions of the narrators themselves. 12

59 Despite its brevity, this sketch of the generic scope of unreliable narration may serve to show that this feature is not confined to narrative fiction. Rather, such hybrid subgenres as the dramatic monologue and the memory play demonstrate that unreliable narration appears crossgenerically. However, the use of unreliable narration in genres other than narrative fiction has yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves.

60 It needs to be emphasized that narrative theory could and should be applied to both narration in drama (cf. Richardson, 1988, 198) and to such hybrid genres as the dramatic monologue and the ballad. The application of narrative theory to genres other than fiction could open up new directions of research in an age of literature that has, after all, become noted for the blurring of genre distinctions. Since both the crossing of the boundaries between fiction, drama, and poetry and the phenomenon that has come to be known as "intermediality" have become hallmarks of contemporary English literature, literary studies would arguably stand to gain by applying the categories and methods developed for the study of one genre (e. g., narrative fiction) to the study of other genres and media. If criticism and theory want to keep up with such innovative literary developments as the blurring of generic boundary lines, critics should not forget the insights which the "cross-generic" application of genre-specific theories affords.

IV. Conclusion

61 Let me conclude with a few brief indications of some of the new territories to be explored that are opened up by such a cognitive framework for the analysis of unreliable narration. Firstly, it can bridge the gap that has separated narratology and cognitive theory for much too long — to the detriment of narratological inquiry, one might add. Secondly, such a cognitive reconceptualization can be usefully applied in the as yet unwritten narratological history of the development of unreliable narration. Thirdly, a cognitive theory of unreliable narration may be useful for understanding how readers make sense of a narrative as a whole. Lastly, only if we take into consideration both the cognitive strategies and the culturally accepted models and frames that readers and critics, usually unconsciously, deploy when they naturalize texts in terms of unreliable narration will we be in a position to assess possible links between the historically variable notions of subjectivity and the equally changing uses of what has come to be known as the unreliable narrator.

62 Many recent novels do indeed suggest that there is something to Wall's (1994, 22) hypothesis "that changes in how subjectivity is viewed will inevitably be reflected in the way reliable or unreliable narration is presented." Contemporary British fiction, for example, often challenges the processes of naturalization involved in the projection of unreliable narrators and calls into question conventional notions of unreliable narration. Wall (1994, 18) has demonstrated that Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day not only "challenges our usual definition of an unreliable narrator," but also "deconstructs the notion of truth, and consequently questions both 'reliable' and 'unreliable' narration and the distinctions we make between them" (23). The same point could be made with respect to many other post-war novels that employ first-person narrators including William Golding's Free Fall (1959), Anthony Burgess ' Earthly Powers (1980), Nigel Williams' Star Turn (1985), William Boyd's The New Confessions (1988), and Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry (1989). Graham Swift's short stories and novels, for example, both foreground and challenge the problematic notions of truth, objectivity, and reliability on which theories of unreliable narration are based (see Nünning, 1993b). The fact that many recent novels and short stories challenge the usual definitions of an unreliable narrator confirms Wall's (1994, 37) view that we really "need to re-think entirely our notion that unreliable narrators give an inaccurate version of events and that our task is to figure out 'what really happened'." Many historians have at last begun to reject the noble dream of objectivity, and it seems to be high time that narratologists did the same. But much more work needs to be done if we want to come to terms with the complex set of narrative strategies and reading processes that, ever since the good old days of Wayne C. Booth, have been subsumed under the wide umbrella of the term "unreliable narration."

63 From the point of view of the proposed cognitive theory of unreliable narration, the answer to the question "Unreliable, compared to what?" can be summed up in one brief sentence: unreliable, not compared to the implied author's norms and values, but to the reader's or critic's preexisting conceptual knowledge of the world and to his or her (usually unacknowledged) frames of reference. This answer and the above hypotheses are not, however, meant to be the last word on the unreliable narrator, but rather the first word on a radical reconceptualization of the subject. If, however, we are to make sense of unreliable narration at all, we would be wise to give up the implied author and instead take into consideration the unacknowledged standards and frames of reference according to which critics think they recognize an unreliable narrator when they see one.

Bibliographie

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Notes de bas de page

1 See Culler (1975) and Fludernik (1993, 1996).

2 Cf. Bal (1981b, 208f.); Jakobsen (1977, 182f.); Toolan (1988, 77ff.); as I have proposed elsewhere (Nünning, 1993a, 1997b), instead of setting up an "implied author" and an "implied reader," it would he more sensible to conceptualize a textual level that encompasses the entirety of the structural properties of a work.

3 Cf. Chatman (1990, 81, 90ff.) and Nelles (1993), who does not even question the concept. Nelles (1993, 22) argues that the implied author and the implied reader "each has its distinctive function: [...] the implied author means, the implied reader interprets." By contrast, Diengott (1993a, 1993b) and Nünning (1993a, 1997b) are highly suspicious of the concept and try to demonstrate the problems it raises for narrative poetics.

4 Lanser (1981, 170f.) and Hof (1984, 55) have suggested that one should distinguish between an unreliable narrator and an untrustworthy one. Hof shows that the report a narrator gives of the events may be heavily flawed although the narrator himself may appear to be absolutely trustworthy. And Lanser (1981, 171) suggests that "a narrator may be quite trustworthy in reporting events but not competent in interpreting them." Cf. Lanser's (1981, 40) observation that "a narrator can be perfectly reliable with respect to the 'facts' of a given story, but unreliable regarding opinions and judgments about the story world." It seems doubtful, however, as Manfred Jahn has pointed out to me (personal communication), whether anything is gained by substituting two ill-defined terms for one problematic category.

5 This approach is indebted to Jahn's valuable suggestions for a cognitive narratology (see Jahn, 1997) and to Fludernik's work on "natural" narratology (see Fludernik, 1993, 1996).

6 For detailed accounts of these signals, cf. Lanser (1981), Rimmon-Kenan (1983), De Reuck (1990), Amorόs (1991), Wall (1994), and Nünning (1997a).

7 Cf. Amorós (1991, 56ff.) and Culler (1975, 140), who distinguishes "five levels of vraisemblance, five ways in which a text may be brought into contact with and defined in relation to another text which helps to make it intelligible."

8 Cf. Culler's (1975, 140) notion of "a general cultural text: shared knowledge which would be recognized by participants as part of culture," and Chatman's (1978, 149) observation that what Booth called moral norms are really "general cultural codes."

9 Cf. Culler (1975, 190, 225, 237) and Wall's (1994, 21) observation that unreliable narrators "reflect some reasonable model of human fallibility" and that readers use their "knowledge of psychology" (29) in evaluating a narrator's motives and behaviour. For the relevance of the reader's implied personality theory for the process of character constitution during the reading process, see Grabes (1996).

10 Cf. Culler (1975, 145-148), Perry (1979, 45), and, with direct relevance to the problem of narrational unreliability, Yacobi (1981, 115f.; 1987, 20f.).

11 Other examples of plays which violate naturalistic stage conventions by relying on unreliable narration would be Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and Harold Pinter's Landscape (1968), the latter being composed of alternating and independent acts of narration spoken by two characters.

12 Cf. Rabinovitz (1983, 67), who argues that "the unreliable narrator in Murphy is in an ultimate sense not at all unreliable; for it depicts, in a truthful way, the illusions and deceptions of the outer world."

Notes de fin

* The present article is a completely revised and extended version of a paper read at a symposium on "Narratologie, Rhetorik, Textlinguistik: Ein Integrationsversuch," held at the University of Dortmund in February 1996. I should like to thank Jon L. Erickson (University of Cologne), Luc Herman (Antwerp), Andreas Höfele (Heidelberg), Manfred Jahn (Cologne), and the convenors and participants of the Dortmund Symposium, especially Monika Fludernik (Freiburg), who also brought Yacobi (1987) to my attention, Gerald Prince and Susan Lanser for their stimulating comments and valuable suggestions.

Professor of English and American Literary and Cultural Studies at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen. He has published books on narratology, Virginia Woolf, the historical novel and historiographic metafiction, and he has recently edited an encyclopedia of literary and cultural theory. His articles on narratology, the eighteenth and nineteenth-century British novel and literary theory (e. g., the New Historicism, gender studies, the history of mentalities, radical constructivism and postcolonial criticism) have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and edited books

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Unreliability and Narrator Types. On the Application Area of ›Unreliable Narration‹

The narratological concept of unreliable narration is subject to constant debate. While this debate affects different kinds of problems associated with unreliability, one of the central issues concerns the application area of ›unreliable narration‹. Here, theorists discuss, for example, whether there are certain types of narrators that cannot be unreliable, whether some kinds of narrators are necessarily unreliable, or in which way other characters apart from narrators can also be unreliable. It is the first one of these questions that I am addressing in this paper: Are there types of narrators that cannot be unreliable?

As I lay out in the first section of my paper, my argumentative starting point is the observation that previous contributions to the application area discussion neglect two basic theoretical distinctions that are necessary to find robust and detailed answers to the relevant questions.

The first of these theoretical distinctions will be addressed in the second section of the paper. It concerns the narrative phenomena that are usually referred to as »unreliable narration«. As I will argue, these phenomena are very heterogeneous, and we must distinguish at least five basic types of unreliability whose application areas partially differ:

fact-related utterance unreliability: the narrator’s claims about story world facts are false or in a relevant sense incomplete,

fact-related cognitive unreliability: the narrator’s beliefs about story world facts are false or in a relevant sense incomplete,

value-related utterance unreliability: the narrator’s evaluative utterances are in conflict with a relevant value system,

value-related cognitive unreliability: the narrator’s evaluative opinions are in conflict with a relevant value system, and

value-related actional unreliability: the narrator’s actions are in conflict with a relevant value system.

In the third section of the paper, I will then proceed to show that four kinds of narrator types have been conflated or confused in the application area debate:

heterodiegetic narrators: narrators who are not part of the narrated story world,

non-personal narrators: narrators of whom we know no features apart from them telling a story, or narrators whom we are not invited to picture,

all-knowing narrators: narrators who have complete knowledge of the story world facts, and

stipulating narrators: narrators who generate the story world facts by narrating them.

In discussions concerning the question of whether one or more of these narrator types cannot be unreliable, some theorists seem to assume that some or all of these types are necessarily connected. I will show, however, that there are hardly any necessary connections between them.

After this preparatory work, I am showing in a step-by-step analysis in section four which of these narrators types can or cannot be unreliable in which way – and why. The results are as follows:

Both heterodiegetic and stipulating narrators can be unreliable in all of the five ways outlined in section two. This outcome may seem surprising for the case of stipulating narrators. It becomes more comprehensible, however, if we bear in mind that only fact-related utterance unreliability is really impugned by a narrator’s ability to create facts by narrating them – and even here we can find a case where unreliability is very likely possible: the case of narratorial self-correction. All-knowing narrators, however, can only be unreliable in four of the five ways: It is, for conceptual reasons, impossible that all-knowing narrators are unreliable on the cognitive level with regards to the story world facts. Since they have complete knowledge of the story world facts, they cannot be wrong or ignorant about them. The case of non-personal narrators, finally, is the most complex. Here, it may first seem that non-personal narrators can never be unreliable – because as soon as a narrator is unreliable, we would know one significant feature of theirs, namely their being unreliable, which makes them personal. However, I will argue that, according to one reading of the non-personality concept, this type of narrator can in fact be unreliable on the utterance level both with regards to facts and values. This is because neither two conflicting reports by the same narrator nor the occurrence of problematic evaluative utterances in a narration – while often being sufficient for fact-related or value-related utterance unreliability respectively – necessarily invite us to picture a narrator. I am closing my paper in section five by summarizing the results and pointing to some possibly debatable theoretical assumptions on which my analyses are based.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Yannic Kappes, Tom Kindt, Matthias Aumüller, Nathan Wildman, Thomas Petraschka, and Arne Spudy, who all contributed to the development of this paper in one way or another.

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How To Write An Unreliable Narrator

By: Author Paul Jenkins

Posted on May 11, 2023

Categories Storytelling , Writing

Do you have what it takes to captivate your reader with a story that’s not quite what it seems? Are you brave enough to dive headfirst into the mind-bending world of the unreliable narrator? If so, welcome to the ultimate writing challenge to test your skills and leave your readers questioning their sanity. With our expert guidance, you’ll learn how to craft a protagonist who’s equal parts charming and deceitful, leading your audience on a wild ride through a world of secrets and lies. We’ll show you how to choose the perfect unreliable narrator, develop a unique voice, and create believable motivations to keep your readers on the edge of their seats. But beware, this is no easy feat. You’ll need to plant subtle clues throughout your story, avoid common pitfalls, and master the art of misdirection. So, are you ready to unleash your inner storyteller and embark on a journey toward literary liberation? Grab your pen (or keyboard), and let’s start exploring the mysterious labyrinth of the unreliable narrator together.

Defining the Unreliable Narrator

You’ve got to master the art of crafting a character whose perspective can’t always be trusted! The unreliable narrator is a popular literary device that adds depth and intrigue to your story.

By developing an unreliable character, you’re giving readers a reason to question the information they receive, forcing them to think critically about what’s happening within your narrative. This approach keeps your audience on their toes and allows for unique storytelling opportunities that might not exist with more straightforward narrators.

Unreliable narration comes in many forms, from intentionally deceitful or manipulative characters to those who misunderstand or misinterpret events around them. Sometimes, these unreliable narrators may even be unaware of their unreliability.

When creating an unreliable character, consider how their background, motivations, and personal biases might shape how they interpret and recount events in your story. It’s essential to strike a balance between making your narrator too obviously untrustworthy – which could lead your readers to dismiss everything they say – and subtly hinting at inconsistencies that will pique their curiosity.

As you experiment with this literary device, remember that it’s crucial for readers to feel invested in solving the puzzle of what’s true and what’s not in the world you’ve created.

Keep them guessing by sprinkling hints throughout the story while maintaining enough ambiguity not to give away all the answers too soon. Your unreliable narrator can serve as both a guide through your tale and a source of mystery for readers eager to uncover hidden truths — after all, who doesn’t love being swept up in a web of uncertainty?

Choosing the Type of Unreliable Narrator

Now, let’s pick the perfect type of storyteller who might bend the truth a bit, crafting a tale that keeps readers on their toes. Choosing the right unreliable narrator is essential to creating a compelling and captivating story.

The first-person narrator, in particular, provides an intimate look into the character’s thoughts and emotions while allowing for some uncertainty about their accuracy.

As you craft your story with one of these unreliable narrators in mind, remember that this is about more than just adding mystery; it’s about freedom – freedom from linear narratives and conventional storytelling methods. It allows you to play with expectations and challenge readers’ understanding of reality as they attempt to piece together what’s truly happening within your pages.

So embrace this opportunity for creative exploration and build a world where nothing is quite as it seems!

Here are the three types of unreliable narrators to choose from:

The Innocent Unreliable Narrator: This type of character is unaware of their unreliability due to factors such as youth or naivety. They may unintentionally deceive the reader through misunderstandings or misinterpretations of events.

The Deliberately Deceptive Unreliable Narrator: Here, a character purposely manipulates information to achieve a specific goal or agenda. Their deception may be subtle or overt but always furthers the plot twist.

The Mentally Unstable Unreliable Narrator: This literary device involves characters whose mental state can cause them to perceive events inaccurately or provide distorted accounts. These narrators are untrustworthy, whether they suffer from hallucinations, memory lapses, or paranoia.

Establishing the Narrator’s Voice

It’s time to dive into crafting that distinctive voice for your character, one that’ll captivate readers and keep ’em guessing!

Establishing the narrator’s voice is essential in writing an unreliable narrator because it sets the tone for the story. To create a captivating narration, you must ensure your main character has a unique and engaging personality. This way, readers can easily differentiate between what is real and simply a product of their mind.

Remember, an unreliable narrator doesn’t disclose everything; they might hide something or twist facts to fit their agenda. To establish your unreliable narrator’s voice effectively, give them distinct characteristics and mannerisms. When writing from their point of view, let these traits shine through in their thoughts and dialogue.

You might choose to have them speak in a particular dialect or use specific slang words – anything that sets them apart from other characters. Additionally, play with sentence structure and pace of narration; this will help convey the main character’s mental state or emotional turmoil.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different techniques when establishing your unreliable narrator’s voice. The key is finding the perfect balance between making your main character likable enough for readers to empathize and maintaining that air of mystery around them so readers can never fully trust them.

Ultimately, you want your audience to question whether they should believe everything being narrated or if there are hidden truths beneath the surface just waiting to be uncovered – after all, isn’t breaking free from predictability part of what makes reading so exhilarating?

So go ahead and unleash the full potential of your unreliable narrator; take those creative risks and watch as it brings magic to your storytelling!

Developing the Narrator’s Motivations

As you delve deeper into your character’s mind, it’s crucial to explore their motivations and desires, which will further shape the intriguing story they’re weaving for the readers.

Developing an unreliable narrator is a delicate balancing act: you want them to be convincing enough that readers are drawn in but not so trustworthy that their unreliability goes unnoticed. To achieve this, a writer must examine what drives their character – from personal trauma or mental illness to a simple desire to deceive – and use those motivations to fuel the twists and turns of short fiction.

For example, if your unreliable narrator struggles with addiction or memory loss, their motivations may involve self-preservation or denial. As they try to hide their shortcomings from others (and perhaps themselves), any inconsistencies in their storytelling can be attributed to these inner demons.

This creates an engaging dynamic where readers are left guessing whether the protagonist intentionally lies or cannot remember events correctly. By understanding your character’s motivations, you’ll reveal more than just inconsistencies in their narrative; you’ll uncover the very soul of your story.

A well-developed unreliable narrator can be a captivating storyteller and a fascinating study of human nature. So permit yourself to dive deep into your character’s psyche—when you know what makes them tick, you’ll find endless possibilities for creating suspenseful twists that keep readers hooked until the very last page.

Planting Subtle Clues

You’ll need to master subtly dropping hints throughout your story, keeping your readers on their toes while maintaining that air of suspense and intrigue.

Planting subtle clues can be a delicate process, but it’s essential for crafting an unreliable narrator who keeps your audience guessing every step of the way. To do this effectively, ensure each hint you plant is contextually relevant and doesn’t feel forced or out of place.

As you continue developing your unreliable narrator in this article section, consider weaving these clues into dialogue and descriptions. For instance, let your narrator provide seemingly innocent information about themselves or others that later proves false, or have them describe events from their perspective that don’t align with other characters’ accounts.

This approach will make readers question what they know and encourage them to seek freedom in untangling the web of deception you’ve spun. Remember that striking a balance between subtlety and clarity is critical; offer enough breadcrumbs for discerning readers to follow without making the twists too predictable.

One technique is using foreshadowing: dropping slight hints early on that may not seem significant until later in the story when more pieces fall into place.

Remember, the goal isn’t necessarily to trick your reader outright but to create an immersive experience where they join your protagonist in navigating a world filled with uncertainty and shifting truths.

Balancing Truth and Deception

Crafting a world of uncertainty and shifting truths, you’ll need to find the perfect balance between truth and deception in your storytelling. As an author, it’s essential to understand that readers will constantly question what they’re being told when using an unreliable narrator.

To create this captivating atmosphere, consider these five tips for balancing truth and deception in your writing:

Introduce contradictions : Have your narrator provide conflicting information or contradict themselves, making readers question their reliability.

Incorporate secondary characters : Use other characters’ reactions to the narrator’s statements to hint at inconsistencies without explicitly stating them.

Leave gaps in information : Withholding important details can create tension and encourage readers to piece together the story independently.

Manipulate emotions : Play with your reader’s emotional investment by having your unreliable narrator express strong feelings about events or characters that may not align with reality.

Blend fact with fiction : Weave elements of truth into the fabric of deception by inserting real-life events or believable circumstances within the narrative.

As you strive for balance in your story, remember that too much deception may lead to confusion and frustration among readers. Keep them engaged by sprinkling moments of clarity throughout the plot. This can be achieved through dialogue from other characters or occasional moments where the unreliable narrator tells a portion of unadulterated truth.

These instances will remind readers that a thread of reality is still woven into your tale. Don’t forget that revealing aspects about your unreliable narrator’s motivations for bending the truth can make them more relatable and humanize them despite their deceptive ways.

By mastering this delicate art of balancing truth and deception in writing, you’ll create an immersive experience for readers who crave freedom from conventional narratives. Allow them to unravel mysteries alongside you as they navigate through layers of twisted truths hidden beneath every word uttered by your enigmatic protagonist.

Maintaining Suspense and Mystery

To keep your readers on the edge of their seats, it’s essential to maintain suspense and mystery throughout your story, weaving a tangled web of clues that’ll have them guessing until the final curtain call.

An unreliable narrator is an excellent tool for achieving this, as they can provide seemingly credible information while simultaneously planting seeds of doubt in the reader’s mind. This delicate balancing act requires careful planning and execution in your writing. Still, when done correctly, it can result in a captivating work of fiction that keeps readers questioning everything they thought they knew.

As you craft your unreliable narrator, consider withholding key information or presenting multiple possible explanations for events. This will force your audience to question their beliefs and constantly reassess their understanding of the narrative.

However, be careful not to overdo it – too much uncertainty can lead to confusion or frustration. The goal is to create just enough ambiguity that readers feel compelled to continue turning pages in search of answers while still feeling engaged with the story.

Remember that maintaining suspense and mystery often relies on pacing and timing. Reveal bits of truth at strategic moments throughout your story to not overwhelm or bore your readers. Let them revel in small victories before introducing new twists and turns that keep them doubting again.

Using an unreliable narrator effectively lets readers free themselves from traditional narrative expectations – an exhilarating experience akin to solving a puzzle where every piece has two sides. Keep them guessing; let the anticipation build, then deliver a satisfying conclusion worthy of their investment in your tale.

Crafting Unreliable Dialogue

In developing deceptive dialogue, it’s crucial to strike the perfect balance between revealing and concealing information, ensuring readers are captivated and intrigued by the narrative. Crafting unreliable dialogue can be a powerful tool in building suspense and keeping your audience on their toes as they try to unravel the truth hidden within the story.

As you weave uncertainty into your characters’ conversations, consider how each line of dialogue can serve multiple purposes – including advancing the plot, deepening character relationships, or throwing suspicion onto other characters. To master writing an unreliable narrator with deceptive dialogue, it is essential to maintain an air of mystery throughout the narrative.

This means exercising restraint when revealing information; sometimes less is more. By not explicitly stating everything upfront and leaving some unsaid, you give your readers room for doubt and speculation. Consider how each conversation may further obfuscate the truth while pushing the story forward.

Utilize ambiguous language: Keep your readers guessing using vague or equivocal phrasing that could be interpreted in several ways. Contradictions and inconsistencies: Have your unreliable narrator contradict themselves or provide conflicting information to other characters. Misdirection through omission: Deliberately leave out crucial details or explanations from conversations to keep readers questioning what happened.

Remember that crafting unreliable dialogue should never feel forced – it should flow naturally from your narrator’s unique voice and their motivations within the story. Embrace subtlety in crafting these exchanges so that upon revisiting them later on, readers experience a newfound appreciation for what was truly being communicated beneath surface-level interactions.

Utilizing Non-Linear Storytelling

Consider using non-linear storytelling to add complexity and intrigue as you weave your tale, turning your narrative into a tantalizing puzzle that readers yearn to solve.

Non-linear storytelling is an excellent way to emphasize the unreliable narrator’s nature, as it allows you to present events out of order or from different perspectives. Doing so creates a sense of uncertainty and mystery around what really happened in the story. This technique keeps readers engaged and encourages them to question the narrator’s unreliability further.

One effective approach for incorporating non-linear storytelling into your work is using flashbacks or alternating between multiple timelines. This can help you explore different aspects of the narrators’ unreliability while providing glimpses into their motivations and past experiences.

You may reveal key events gradually throughout the story, encouraging readers to piece together information like a detective searching for clues. Another option is presenting information in a fragmented manner—mixing up scenes or even sentences—to reflect the unstable mental state of your person-point narrator.

As you experiment with various forms of non-linear storytelling, remember that striking a balance between intrigue and clarity is crucial. While it’s important to keep readers guessing what’s true and what isn’t, they should never feel completely lost or overwhelmed by confusion.

The goal here is not just to create doubt about your unreliable narrator’s account but also to give readers enough pieces of the puzzle so that they remain eager and motivated to uncover the truth behind each event within your captivating story world.

Revealing the Truth Gradually

You’ll want to unveil the truth bit by bit, keeping your readers hooked while they question each revelation and its implications.

The gradual development of the unreliable narrator’s story is a powerful narrative technique that allows you to maintain reader engagement throughout your writing. By revealing the truth gradually, you create an air of mystery and intrigue that encourages readers to keep questioning what’s real and what isn’t.

To make this gradual unveiling even more effective, consider the following:

• Introduce subtle discrepancies in your unreliable narrator’s account of events, allowing readers to doubt their perspective.
• Create moments where other characters challenge or contradict the narrator’s version of events.
• Play with the concept of memory – have your narrator recall past events inaccurately or out of order.
• Employ different narrative styles or voices within your writing, suggesting that there may be multiple interpretations of reality.

By incorporating these strategies into your work, you’re encouraging readers to engage with your story deeper as they attempt to piece together the true account from the fragments provided.

This sense of uncertainty can lead them to self-discovery and freedom as they explore different perspectives within themselves and question their assumptions about reality.

As you continue crafting stories with unreliable narrators and gradually revealing truths throughout your narrative, remember that maintaining reader engagement is key. Keep experimenting with various techniques for slowly unveiling information while leaving space for interpretation.

In doing so, not only will you create compelling narratives filled with suspense and intrigue but also provide opportunities for personal growth as both writer and reader navigate through layers of uncertainty towards clarity.

Exploring the Narrator’s Psychological State

Diving into your character’s psychological state, you’ll uncover the darkness and complexity that can drive their distorted perceptions, blending truth and deception seamlessly. As you explore the depths of your unreliable narrator’s mind, you’ll find a rich tapestry of fears, desires, and traumas that have shaped their understanding of the world.

Use this knowledge to craft your narrative so readers are drawn in by the intrigue and uncertainty of trying to discern fact from fiction. Don’t be afraid to delve into uncomfortable territory when exploring your unreliable narrator’s psychological state. Write about moments where they confront painful memories or face difficult emotions head-on.

This exploration will not only make for gripping storytelling but also help humanize an otherwise untrustworthy figure. Encourage empathy from your audience by revealing glimpses of vulnerability beneath the surface-level deceit.

As you continue to write about your narrator’s psychological state, remember that balance is key. While it’s essential to provide enough insight into their mental landscape not to leave readers feeling lost or frustrated, avoid spoon-feeding them every detail outright.

Instead, allow space for interpretation and speculation – this ambiguity will heighten reader engagement and make for a more compelling story overall. By showcasing the unreliable narrator’s strengths and weaknesses while navigating their complex inner workings, you’ll create a fascinating literary journey worth taking.

Strengthening Character Development

Ready to level up your character development game and make that unreliable protagonist unforgettable? The secret lies in understanding the subtle art of crafting an unreliable narrator.

You see, it’s not just about throwing in a twist or keeping the reader guessing; it’s about strengthening every aspect of your character and immersing them in a contextually relevant environment. When you master this approach, your readers will find themselves irresistibly drawn into the world you’ve created—rooting for (or against) your protagonist as they navigate their twisted journey.

So how do you go about building such a captivating character? Start by injecting layers of complexity into their backstory, motivations, and relationships. As you write, dive deep into what makes them tick, exploring their fears, desires, and contradictions.

Remember that even flawed characters are human beings at their core and deserve to be treated with empathy and respect. By grounding your unreliable narrator in reality while maintaining an air of mystery around them, you’ll create a compelling sense of intrigue that keeps readers hanging on to every word.

The key to achieving this delicate balance is constant vigilance: always question whether each piece of information you reveal (or withhold) serves a purpose within the story. It may be tempting to slip in extra surprises or misdirection for shock value alone—but remember that true satisfaction comes from weaving together all those intricate narrative threads into one cohesive tapestry.

And when everything finally clicks into place—when your readers are left breathless by the unexpected yet perfectly executed turn of events—you know you’ve mastered the art of writing an unforgettable unreliable narrator.

Addressing the Unreliability

When addressing the unreliability, don’t beat around the bush; tackle it head-on, ensuring that your character’s inconsistencies add depth and intrigue to your story. Embrace these narrative techniques to create a unique and memorable reading experience.

Use writing tips such as flashbacks, multiple perspectives, or an unreliable narrator to create uncertainty in the reader’s mind. This way, you can keep them guessing as they try deciphering the truth behind your character’s actions and motivations.

One effective strategy for addressing unreliability is through subtle hints and clues, gradually revealing discrepancies between what the unreliable narrator says and what happens in the story. Doing this allows readers to question their own assumptions about reality while simultaneously making them more invested in discovering how events truly unfolded.

Remember that character development plays a crucial role here – crafting well-rounded characters with believable actions, motives, and emotions makes it easier for readers to empathize with your unreliable narrator, even if they’re not entirely trustworthy.

Your goal is to entertain and challenge your audience’s perception of freedom – both within fiction itself and in their everyday lives. By skillfully incorporating an unreliable narrator into your storytelling arsenal, you invite readers on a thrilling journey filled with twists and turns where nothing is quite what it seems at first glance.

So experiment with different narrative techniques that play with readers’ expectations until you find one that resonates perfectly with your creative vision! The result may be a compelling tale that stays with them long after they’ve turned the last page.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls

It’s essential to dodge those pesky pitfalls that can trip up even the most seasoned storytellers. Let’s explore how to keep your tale engaging and captivating without falling into common traps!

You don’t want your readers to feel cheated or annoyed by the end of your story. To avoid this, be honest with them through subtle hints about the unreliable narrator’s true nature. Be cautious not to overdo it – you still want to maintain a sense of intrigue and mystery throughout.

Next on the list is avoiding excessive confusion for your audience. While it’s true that an unreliable narrator often leaves readers questioning what they know, there is a fine line between creating uncertainty and frustrating chaos.

Strike a balance by providing enough information for readers to piece things together while maintaining an air of unpredictability. This way, they’ll feel satisfied when they finally unravel the truth behind your character’s lies.

Lastly, ensure that other characters within the story are well-developed and have their motivations apart from being manipulated by the unreliable narrator. Your readers will appreciate having more than one perspective in play, as it adds depth to character development and storytelling.

Remember that these three points will help you craft an enthralling adventure that draws readers in without leading them down dead-end paths or leaving them lost in labyrinthine twists!

Mastering the Art of Misdirection

Now that you’ve learned how to avoid common pitfalls when writing an unreliable narrator, it’s time to take your skills to the next level and master the art of misdirection.

Misdirection is vital for crafting a compelling short story with an unreliable narrator. It keeps readers on their toes and makes them question what they know about reality.

Using multiple perspectives is one effective way to create misdirection in your story. Various characters offer different points of view, making readers unsure whose account is accurate.

Another way is leaving out vital pieces of information. This allows readers to fill in the gaps themselves, often leading them astray and causing confusion about what happened.

Incorporating red herrings is also a helpful technique. Introduce false clues or distractions that lead readers down the wrong path, only revealing the truth later.

As you work on mastering these techniques, remember: your audience has a subconscious desire for freedom. Embrace that desire by allowing your unreliable narrator to break free from traditional storytelling conventions.

The more creatively you use misdirection, your story becomes more engaging and unexpected. So go ahead – play with your reader’s expectations! Keep them guessing at every turn as they navigate through your carefully crafted maze of lies and half-truths.

By skillfully weaving together an intricate web of uncertainty around your unreliable narrator, you’ll leave them questioning not just the events of your short story but also their own perceptions of reality itself.

So, trust us on this one. You’ve got everything you need to create the most unreliable narrator ever – and have a blast doing it too!

Just remember, don’t overdo it, or your readers might doubt your very existence. After all, who wouldn’t want to lead their audience on a wild goose chase of deception and confusion?

Now go forth and write that twisted masterpiece! And hey, if you can’t trust yourself…who can you trust?

50 Must-Read Books with Unreliable Narrators

Emily Martin

Emily has a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi, MS, and she has an MFA in Creative Writing from GCSU in Milledgeville, GA, home of Flannery O’Connor. She spends her free time reading, watching horror movies and musicals, cuddling cats, Instagramming pictures of cats, and blogging/podcasting about books with the ladies over at #BookSquadGoals (www.booksquadgoals.com). She can be reached at [email protected].

View All posts by Emily Martin

Whenever we encounter a first person narrator in a novel, we as readers know we’re getting a character’s version of the story rather than directly witnessing the events as they actually happened. S0 in a way, one could argue that every first-person narrator is an unreliable narrator, but some narrators are more trustworthy than others. A narrator is “unreliable” when we have reasons to doubt the versions of events he or she is presenting to us as factual in a story. Whether it be for reasons of mental instability or self-preservation, we know the narrator isn’t disclosing everything to us, or isn’t telling us the whole truth. Here are 50 of the most intriguing books with unreliable narrators in fiction.

Ahem: Some spoilers to follow. 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

In the village of King’s Abbot, a widow’s sudden suicide sparks rumors that she murdered her first husband, was being blackmailed, and was carrying on a secret affair with the wealthy Roger Ackroyd. The following evening, Ackroyd is murdered in his locked study—but not before receiving a letter identifying the widow’s blackmailer. King’s Abbot is crawling with suspects, including a nervous butler, Ackroyd’s wayward stepson, and his sister-in-law, Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd, who has taken up residence in the victim’s home. It’s now up to the famous detective Hercule Poirot, who has retired to King’s Abbot to garden, to solve the case of who killed Roger Ackroyd—a task in which he is aided by the village doctor and narrator, James Sheppard, and by Sheppard’s ingenious sister, Caroline.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane relentlessly bears down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades—with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge .  Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson

Mary B. Addison killed a baby.

Allegedly. She didn’t say much in that first interview with detectives, and the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: A white baby had died while under the care of a churchgoing black woman and her nine-year-old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official. But did she do it? She wouldn’t say.

Mary survived six years in baby jail before being dumped in a group home. The house isn’t really “home”—no place where you fear for your life can be considered a home. Home is Ted, who she meets on assignment at a nursing home.

There wasn’t a point to setting the record straight before, but now she’s got Ted—and their unborn child—to think about. When the state threatens to take her baby, Mary must find the voice to fight her past. And her fate lies in the hands of the one person she distrusts the most: her Momma. No one knows the real Momma. But who really knows the real Mary?

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

In 1950, a young doctor called Norton Perina signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote Micronesian island of Ivu’ivu in search of a rumored lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub “The Dreamers,” who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile. Perina suspects the source of their longevity is a hard-to-find turtle; unable to resist the possibility of eternal life, he kills one and smuggles some meat back to the States. He scientifically proves his thesis, earning worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize, but he soon discovers that its miraculous property comes at a terrible price. As things quickly spiral out of his control, his own demons take hold, with devastating personal consequences.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Years ago, when  House of Leaves  was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street. He is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to head-on collision with America’s greatest dream—and its worst nightmare— American Psycho is bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

A beautiful and distinguished family. A private island. A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy. A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive. A revolution. An accident. A secret. Lies upon lies. True love. The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.

And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, a Tamil boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane

Ruth is widowed, her sons are grown, and she lives in an isolated beach house outside of town. Her routines are few and small. One day a stranger arrives at her door, looking as if she has been blown in from the sea. This woman―Frida―claims to be a care worker sent by the government. Ruth lets her in. Now that Frida is in her house, is Ruth right to fear the tiger she hears on the prowl at night, far from its jungle habitat? Why do memories of childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency? How far can she trust this mysterious woman, Frida, who seems to carry with her own troubled past? And how far can Ruth trust herself?

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

In this darkly riveting debut novel—a sophisticated psychological mystery that is also an heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and aging—an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared, and her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences.

Maud, an aging grandmother, is slowly losing her memory—and her grip on everyday life. Yet she refuses to forget her best friend Elizabeth, whom she is convinced is missing and in terrible danger.

But no one will listen to Maud—not her frustrated daughter, Helen, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth’s mercurial son, Peter. Armed with handwritten notes she leaves for herself and an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth and save her beloved friend.

This singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud’s rapidly dissolving present. But the clues she discovers seem only to lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II.

As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud discovers new momentum in her search for her friend. Could the mystery of Sukey’s disappearance hold the key to finding Elizabeth?

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis,  We Have Always Lived in the Castle  is perhaps the crowning achievement of Shirley Jackson’s brilliant career: a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the dramatic struggle that ensues when an unexpected visitor interrupts their unusual way of life.

# FashionVictim by Amina Akhtar

Fashion editor Anya St. Clair is on the verge of greatness. Her wardrobe is to die for. Her social media is killer. And her career path is littered with the bodies of anyone who got in her way. She’s worked hard to get where she is, but she doesn’t have everything.

Not like Sarah Taft. Anya’s obsession sits one desk away. Beautiful, stylish, and rich, she was born to be a fashion world icon. From her beach-wave blonde hair to her on-trend nail art, she’s a walking editorial spread. And Anya wants to be her friend. Her best friend. Her only friend.

But when Sarah becomes her top competition for a promotion, Anya’s plan to win her friendship goes into overdrive. In order to beat Sarah…she’ll have to become her. Friendly competition may turn fatal, but as they say in fashion:  One day you’re in, and the next day you’re dead.

Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall

This is a love story.  Mike’s  love story. Mike Hayes fought his way out of a brutal childhood and into a quiet if lonely life—before he met Verity Metcalf. V taught him about love, and in return Mike has dedicated his life to making her happy. He’s found the perfect home, the perfect job; he’s sculpted himself into the physical ideal V has always wanted. He knows they’ll be blissfully happy together. It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been returning his emails or phone calls. It doesn’t matter that she says she’s marrying Angus. It’s all just part of the secret game they used to play. If Mike watches V closely, he’ll see the signs. If he keeps track of her every move, he’ll know just when to come to her rescue…

One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

Pay close attention and you might solve this. On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention. Bronwyn,  the brain,  is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule. Addy,  the beauty,  is the picture-perfect homecoming princess. Nate,  the criminal , is already on probation for dealing. Cooper,  the athlete , is the all-star baseball pitcher. And   Simon,  the outcast , is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app.

Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon’s dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose? Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

My Sunshine Away by M.O. Walsh

In the summer of 1989, a Baton Rouge neighborhood best known for cookouts on sweltering summer afternoons, cauldrons of spicy crawfish, and passionate football fandom is rocked by a violent crime when fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson—free spirit, track star, and belle of the block—is attacked late one evening near her home.

For such a close-knit community, the suspects are numerous, and the secrets hidden behind each closed door begin to unravel. Even the young teenage boy across the street, our narrator, does not escape suspicion. It is through his eyes, still haunted by heartbreak and guilt many years later, that we begin to piece together the night of Lindy’s attack and its terrible rippling consequences on the once-idyllic community.

Both an enchanting coming-of-age story and a gripping mystery, My Sunshine Away  reveals the ways in which our childhoods shape us, and what happens when those childhoods end. Acutely wise and deeply honest, this is an astonishing and page-turning debut about the meaning of family, the power of memory, and our ability to forgive.

Room by Emma Donoghue

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world…It’s where he was born, it’s where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack’s imagination—the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells, the imaginary world projected through the TV, the coziness of Wardrobe beneath Ma’s clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night, in case Old Nick comes.

Hysteria by Megan Miranda

After stabbing and killing her boyfriend, sixteen-year-old Mallory, who has no memory of the event, is sent away to a boarding school to escape the gossip and threats, but someone or something is following her.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is an astonishingly imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.

Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, for fifteen-year-old Christopher everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning. He lives on patterns, rules, and a diagram kept in his pocket. Then one day, a neighbor’s dog, Wellington, is killed and his carefully constructive universe is threatened. Christopher sets out to solve the murder in the style of his favourite (logical) detective, Sherlock Holmes. What follows makes for a novel that is funny, poignant and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing are a mind that perceives the world entirely literally.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady’s maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives—presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.

On a hot summer day in 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century,  Atonement  engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. ‘Jess and Jason’, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy. And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar. Now they’ll see; she’s much more than just the girl on the train…

You by Caroline Kepnes

When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.

There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.

As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder.

Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

Andrew Winston Winters is at war with himself.

He’s part Win, the lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy. The guy who shuts all his classmates out, no matter the cost.

He’s part Drew, the angry young boy with violent impulses that control him. The boy who spent a fateful, long-ago summer with his brother and teenage cousins, only to endure a secret so monstrous it led three children to do the unthinkable.

Over the course of one night, while stuck at a party deep in the New England woods, Andrew battles both the pain of his past and the isolation of his present.

Before the sun rises, he’ll either surrender his sanity to the wild darkness inside his mind or make peace with the most elemental of truths—that choosing to live can mean so much more than not dying.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath’s shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity.

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche,  The Bell Jar  is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

What Was She Thinking? by Zoë Heller

Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary life until Sheba Hart, the new art teacher at St. George’s, befriends her. But even as their relationship develops, so too does another: Sheba has begun an illicit affair with an underage male student. When the scandal turns into a media circus, Barbara decides to write an account in her friend’s defense—and ends up revealing not only Sheba’s secrets, but also her own.

The Sound And the Fury by William Faulkner

First published in 1929, Faulkner created his “heart’s darling,” the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers—the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason.

Liar by Justine Larbalestier

Micah will freely admit she’s a compulsive liar, but that may be the one honest thing she’ll ever tell you. Over the years she’s fooled everyone: her classmates, her teachers, even her parents. And she’s always managed to stay one step ahead of her lies. That is, until her boyfriend dies under brutal circumstances and her dishonesty begins to catch up with her. But is it possible to tell the truth when lying comes as easily as breathing?

Taking listeners deep into the psyche of a young woman who will say just about anything to convince them—and herself—that she’s finally come clean, Liar is a bone-chilling thriller that will have listeners seesawing between truths and lies right up to the end. Honestly.

Jazz by Toni Morrison

In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life—having nothing but his own wits to help him along.

Born in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his village’s wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man’s (very unlucky) son. From behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram’s new world is a revelation. While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly (“Love—Rape—Revenge!”), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles (all but one). He also finds a way out of the Coop that no one else inside it can perceive.

Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup

Seven years ago, Vivek ‘Vicky’ Rai, the playboy son of the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh, murdered Ruby Gill at a trendy restaurant in New Delhi simply because she refused to serve him a drink. Now Vicky Rai is dead, killed at his farmhouse at a party he had thrown to celebrate his acquittal. The police search each and every guest. Six of them are discovered with guns in their possession.

In this elaborate murder mystery we join Arun Advani, India’s best-known investigative journalist, as the lives of these six suspects unravel before our eyes: a corrupt bureaucrat; an American tourist; a stone-age tribesman; a Bollywood sex symbol; a mobile phone thief; and an ambitious politician. Each is equally likely to have pulled the trigger. Inspired by actual events, Vikas Swarup’s eagerly awaited second novel is both a riveting page turner and an insightful peek into the heart and soul of contemporary India.

In a Dark, Dark Wood By Ruth Ware

Nora hasn’t seen Clare for ten years. Not since Nora walked out of school one day and never went back. Until, out of the blue, an invitation to Clare’s hen do arrives. Is this a chance for Nora to finally put her past behind her? But something goes wrong. Very wrong. Some things can’t stay secret for ever.

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

Substance D is not known as Death for nothing. It is the most toxic drug ever to find its way on to the streets of LA. It destroys the links between the brain’s two hemispheres, causing, first, disorientation and then complete and irreversible brain damage.

The undercover narcotics agent who calls himself Bob Arctor is desperate to discover the ultimate source of supply. But to find any kind of lead he has to pose as a user and, inevitably, without realising what is happening, Arctor is soon as addicted as the junkies he works among…

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Humbert Humbert—scholar, aesthete and romantic—has fallen completely and utterly in love with Lolita Haze, his landlady’s gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs. Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

In his debut novel, Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist.  Fight Club ‘s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret boxing matches in the basement of bars. There two men fight “as long as they have to.” A gloriously original work that exposes what is at the core of our modern world.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

“My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be…Nelly, I  am  Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure…but as my own being.”  Wuthering Heights  is the only novel of Emily Brontë, who died a year after its publication, at the age of thirty. A brooding Yorkshire tale of a love that is stronger than death, it is also a fierce vision of metaphysical passion, in which heaven and hell, nature and society, are powerfully juxtaposed. Unique, mystical, with a timeless appeal, it has become a classic of English literature.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Mara Dyer doesn’t think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.  It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.  There is.

She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.  She’s wrong.

More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

Sixteen-year-old Aaron Soto is struggling to find happiness after a family tragedy leaves him reeling. He’s slowly remembering what happiness might feel like this summer with the support of his girlfriend Genevieve, but it’s his new best friend, Thomas, who really gets Aaron to open up about his past and confront his future.

As Thomas and Aaron get closer, Aaron discovers things about himself that threaten to shatter his newfound contentment. A revolutionary memory-alteration procedure, courtesy of the Leteo Institute, might be the way to straighten himself out. But what if it means forgetting who he truly is?

The Memory Box by Eva Lesko Natiello

In this gripping psychological thriller, a group of privileged suburban moms amuse themselves by Googling everyone in town, digging up dirt to fuel thorny gossip. Caroline Thompson, devoted mother of two, sticks to the moral high ground and attempts to avoid these women. She’s relieved to hear her name appears only three times, citing her philanthropy. Despite being grateful that she has nothing to hide, a delayed pang of insecurity prods Caroline to Google her maiden name—which none of the others know.

The hits cascade like a tsunami. Caroline’s terrified by what she reads. An obituary for her sister, JD? That’s absurd. With every click, the revelations grow more alarming. They can’t be right. She’d know. Caroline is hurled into a state of paranoia—upending her blissful family life—desperate to prove these allegations false before someone discovers they’re true.

Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas

It’s Spring Break of senior year. Anna, her boyfriend Tate, her best friend Elise, and a few other close friends are off on a debaucherous trip to Aruba that promises to be the time of their lives. But when Elise is found brutally murdered, Anna finds herself trapped in a country not her own, fighting against vile and contemptuous accusations.

As Anna sets out to find her friend’s killer, she discovers hard truths about her friendships, the slippery nature of truth, and the ache of young love.

As she awaits the judge’s decree, it becomes clear that everyone around her thinks she is not just guilty, but dangerous. When the truth comes out, it is more shocking than one could ever imagine…

Another Little Piece by Kate Karyus Quinn

On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.

A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.

Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish…a bloody razor…and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese’s fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson

Christine wakes up every morning in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar man. She looks in the mirror and sees an unfamiliar, middle-aged face. And every morning, the man she has woken up with must explain that he is Ben, he is her husband, she is forty-seven years old, and a terrible accident two decades earlier decimated her ability to form new memories.

Every day, Christine must begin again the reconstruction of her past. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more unbelievable it seems.

The Dinner by Herman Koch

It’s a summer’s evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse—the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

In a split second, Jenna Gray’s world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever.

Slowly, Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future. But her past is about to catch up with her, and the consequences will be devastating…

In The Blood by Lisa Unger

About to graduate from university in upstate New York, Lana Granger takes a job in town looking after eleven-year-old Luke. Expelled from schools all over the country, manipulative Luke is accustomed to controlling the people in his life. He likes to play games. But in Lana he may have met his match. Or has Lana met hers?

Because Lana is a liar. She has told so many lies about where she comes from and who she is, that even she can’t remember the truth.

Then Lana’s closest friend Beck mysteriously goes missing, and Lana’s alibi for the night of the disappearance doesn’t match with eyewitness accounts. Now, Lana finds herself lying again—to friends, to the police, to herself. Lana is willing to do almost anything to keep the truth—about her last night with Beck, about everything—from coming out. Even so, it might not be enough to keep her shocking secrets dead and buried.

But somebody knows all about Lana’s lies. And they are dying to tell.

The Other Mother by Carol Goodman

When Daphne Marist and her infant daughter, Chloe, pull up the gravel drive to the home of Daphne’s new employer, it feels like they’ve entered a whole new world. Tucked in the Catskills, the stone mansion looks like something out of a fairytale, its lush landscaping hiding the view of the mental asylum just beyond its border. Daphne secured the live-in position using an assumed name and fake credentials, telling no one that she’s on the run from a controlling husband who has threatened to take her daughter away.

Daphne’s new life is a far cry from the one she had in Westchester where, just months before, she and her husband welcomed little Chloe. From the start, Daphne tries to be a good mother, but she’s plagued by dark moods and intrusive thoughts that convince her she’s capable of harming her own daughter. When Daphne is diagnosed with Post Partum Mood Disorder, her downward spiral feels unstoppable—until she meets Laurel Hobbes.

Laurel, who also has a daughter named Chloe, is everything Daphne isn’t: charismatic, sophisticated, fearless. They immediately form an intense friendship, revealing secrets to one another they thought they’d never share. Soon, they start to look alike, dress alike, and talk alike, their lives mirroring one another in strange and disturbing ways. But Daphne realizes only too late that being friends with Laurel will come at a very shocking price—one that will ultimately lead her to that towering mansion in the Catskills where terrifying, long-hidden truths will finally be revealed…

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie.

Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it’s the truth?

17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma

Seventeen-year-old Lauren is having visions of girls who have gone missing. And all these girls have just one thing in common—they are seventeen and gone without a trace. As Lauren struggles to shake these waking nightmares, impossible questions demand urgent answers: Why are the girls speaking to Lauren? How can she help them? And…is she next? Through Lauren’s search for clues, things begin to unravel, and when a brush with death lands Lauren in the hospital, a shocking truth changes everything.

With complexity and richness, Nova Ren Suma serves up a beautifully visual, fresh interpretation of what it means to be lost.

How many of these books with unreliable narrators have you read? What did you think of their narrators? Let me know in the comments!

And for more on books with unreliable narrators, check out Genre Kryptonite: Unreliable Narrators .

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The monstrous mind behind the summer’s most anticipated graphic novel

Emil Ferris burst onto the scene with “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters.” It took everything she had.

CHICAGO — Emil Ferris warned me that what she was about to do would draw some attention.

“I’m in imagination land so much, it’s hard to come out of it,” said the celebrated graphic novelist when we met up this month. “So I brought my witch hat.” Her what now? She pulled it from her handbag, and it popped open like a beach tent.

Ferris has worn the witch hat for speeches and talks and just for the hell of it. “But also, I think when religions decided to make magic outside of the purview of human beings, that was a great crime against humanity.” What would happen, she wondered, if we understood the extent of our powers?

The preteen narrator of Ferris’s “ My Favorite Thing Is Monsters ” would approve. One look at Karen Reyes and her toothy underbite, and you know she’s a comics protagonist for the ages: plucky and precocious, a big-hearted misfit who sees herself as a werewolf girl detective, dressing in a long coat and fedora. Like the author, Karen devours creature features and pulp comics; the horror genre becomes a conduit for her dawning awareness of her sexuality and the violence of 1960s Chicago. As she sets out to make sense of her world — the murder of her neighbor Anka, a concentration camp survivor; the possible involvement of her brother, Deeze, a mob enforcer — the boundary blurs between reality and pretending.

Readers fell in love with this chimera of a story, which shapeshifted from mystery to Holocaust novel to queer coming-of-age tale, its art luxuriantly strange — like someone threw together Otto Dix and back issues of Mad magazine and set the blender on high. Ferris won three Eisner Awards in 2018, the comics industry’s highest honors. Book One also became a surprise bestseller, spurring its publisher, Fantagraphics, to order its largest second printing ever. (The long-awaited Book Two arrives May 28.) Gary Groth, co-founder of Fantagraphics, called it a “publishing fantasy story.” Art Spiegelman, Ferris’s hero, called her “one of the most important comics artists of our time.” At 55, she seemed to have shot onto the literary scene like a firework — in an instantaneous, dazzling burst out of obscurity.

But if her success was a fairy tale, it was in the Brothers Grimm sense — involving gore and excruciating transformation. At Ferris’s 40th birthday party, a mosquito bit her right leg, infecting her with the West Nile virus. She developed meningitis and encephalitis (“I hit the jackpot, I really did”). When she came to in the hospital, Ferris, who had drawn before she could walk — scoliosis delayed her first steps until age 3 — didn’t know if she would do either, ever again. She was paralyzed from the waist down and had lost the use of her dominant hand.

At the time, Ferris supported herself and her 6-year-old daughter through various jobs: housecleaning, illustration gigs, sculpting Happy Meals toys. Clawing back her ability to draw — first duct-taping a quill pen to her hand — filled her with a new ferocity about making art.

“My forest got burnt down,” she said. “The only way for — I think it’s birch trees — to grow is if they’re exposed to high temperatures. It was what had to happen. Otherwise I would never have made this book.”

When we met, Ferris was in the middle of a long, harrowing move from her studio, which had been taken over by mold, “these black creeping tendrils that climb up your walls … I think it’s kind of evil.” So we headed to the Art Institute of Chicago, which is in many ways the place that made her. It’s where her parents met, as students in its art school (and where, she has it “on good authority,” they conceived her). Decades later, after her illness, she enrolled too. The sight of her on the first day — then in her 40s, in a wheelchair — made her fresh-faced young classmates do a double take. She had advanced to walking on two canes by the time she graduated, earning her bachelor’s degree in 2008 and her master of fine arts in 2010. The prize money for her thesis became seed capital for “Monsters.”

Her father regularly brought her to the museum when she was a child. “He talked just like a truck driver. He put on no airs,” she said. “But he gave me such an education.” He taught her, for example, the importance of the repetition of shape — a trick she tried to deploy in her pages: “The eye gets trained for the shape, and even if the eye doesn’t perceive that they’re seeing it again, there’s a sense of reassurance.” Some of the most moving scenes in “Monsters” can be traced back to these visits: Deeze leads his little sister by the hand up the museum’s grand steps, telling her, “Don’t be scared Kare, we’re going to see some friends.”

Taking in the galleries felt a little like wandering through a chamber of Ferris’s brain. The seeds of her style were all around us: the irreverence of Daumier’s bronze busts; the creepiness of the nudes haunting a surrealist forest; the antiwar passion of Goya. On our way to lunch, she steered us toward some especially beloved supernatural beings: the shukongojin from Japan. “Isn’t he magnificent?” she asked, leaning on her lightning-bolt-shaped cane. Around the corner: “There’s my buddy Ganesh,” who broke off his own tusk to keep writing the Mahabharata. “Now that’s devotion.”

Ferris knows from devotion: Every inch of “Monsters” testifies to an astonishing depth of it. Since the story is told through the wide-ruled, spiral-bound pages of Karen’s diary, Ferris confined herself to ballpoint, which has none of the easy fluidity of wet ink. “It’s difficult,” she said, with a low chuckle at the understatement. “To make anything happen, to draw anything out of the void, you have to make a thousand marks.” Ordering Bic pens in bulk online, she somehow filled hundreds of pages with impossible lushness, her drawings both eye-wateringly precise and infused with nervy, DIY energy.

When Book One finally came out, said Ferris, “I think people were kind of surprised that all the years I’d said I am working on this graphic novel, that I wasn’t just delusional or psychotic or a scam artist or whatever — but that I actually was working on it, every single day.”

All those years of work took sacrifice: “You fail at life,” she said, with almost a shrug. While she was working on Book One, she fell behind on bills, got evicted; she told herself she would finish, come hell or high water. “And that just means that hell will come, and high water will come, and you’re going, ‘Well look at that floating away.’”

The long-awaited Book Two picks up where Book One left off — a surreal cliffhanger in which Karen, in a dream, learns a shocking family secret. But even as we find Karen in that same dream, as the rest of the book unfolds, it seems obvious that she’s changing. She develops her first real crush, on a girl named Shelly. She speaks up against Deeze’s leering sexism. She takes greater risks, determined to uncover the secrets he’s keeping from her. In other words, she grows up.

Ferris had tried out a couple of different paths for the character — some of them involved extreme violence, even sexual violence — but decided against it. “I knew I didn’t want to do that to people,” she said. “Besides, Karen told me no. And I said, okay. Then it was necessary to find out what would happen.”

In one of Book Two’s most terrifying scenes, Karen wakes up alone in an alley, bloody, unable to remember what happened to her, or what she did, in the previous hours. Ferris’s spreads are usually flooded with shadow and color, but she leaves this one mostly blank. As the characters rocket off into a new adventure, abandoning everything they’ve ever known — and all evidence of their sins — we’re unsure how to feel: relieved to be kept from the truth or terrified of what’s been kept off the page.

I thought of that — the prickly friction between avoidance and confrontation, innocence and knowledge — on our wander through the galleries. Ferris was right about the hat. It did draw attention: wide eyes, suppressed giggles. In ordinary circumstances, her physicality — an older woman, walking with a cane — might have relegated her to the corner of people’s vision, but the hat made her loom cheerfully large. Visitors held the elevators. Children came up to talk to her. Security guards paid compliments. (“And I love your hair,” she replied.) The hat made her difference hyper-present — a joke she was cracking, though it’s hard to say at whose expense. I kept trying, and failing, to catch her gaze under the curve of the brim.

Even so, she had so much to share: See that curtain, over to the side of Ingres’s portrait of a young count? It’s draped to suggest a sneer. Or this Norwegian landscape of a cottage in the woods, its lighted windows like a pair of frightened eyes? “Don’t you think the shadow, in this Munch painting , is really a tongue unfurling to touch the girl’s foot?” she asked, tracing the shape through the air. “These are not mistakes.”

Ferris sees what lurks beneath the surfaces: faces, creatures, mischievous intent. Her gift is that she makes you see them too. She pulls you into imagination land, right along with her.

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Frank Bruni

How to buy yourself a longer life.

By Frank Bruni

Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.

The fitness chain Equinox recently announced a new peak of pampering, a higher altitude of indulgence. It’s a deluxe membership called Optimize by Equinox, it costs about $40,000 a year and it comes with a sleep coach.

I know what tennis coaches do. They bark corrections at players whose serves stink. I know what football coaches do. They scream at referees about pass-interference calls.

But a sleep coach? I picture a bedside bully with a stopwatch and Sominex, demanding a sprint into R.E.M.: “You can do it! Breathe! Dream! ”

According to a recent article about Optimize on CNBC.com, the sleep coach is actually more of a sleep consultant, conducting two private, half-hour sessions a month on snoozing like a pro, and belongs to a crew of coddlers including a twice-monthly nutrition coach and a thrice-weekly personal trainer. Their goal isn’t simply fitness or even wellness. It’s longevity. And that, apparently, takes a village. As well as a fortune.

More than a decade ago, I wrote about how “the places and ways in which Americans are economically segregated and stratified have multiplied, with microclimates of exclusivity popping up everywhere.” I mentioned special passes that sped big spenders to the front of amusement-park lines. About Uber echelons. And about Equinox, where, at that point, there were tiers of trainers with escalating hourly rates, and where eye-scanning technology determined who had paid for admission to special sanctums.

Could we possibly give people even more extravagant and obvious ways to advertise and, well, optimize their affluence? Equinox has answered that with a resounding yes and in a manner that reflects an intensifying obsession among the economic elite: eternal, or at least extended, youth.

It has long been the case that the rich live longer . They have access to better food, better medical care and other ingredients of, and inducements to, better health. But now, as an article in Axios this week explained, there’s a burgeoning longevity industry with “a growing gap between what’s available to wealthy consumers and everyone else.”

The wealthiest consumers of all have hatched or latched on to elaborate, exorbitant immortality schemes. The billionaire tech C.E.O. Bryan Johnson, 46, reportedly spends about $2 million a year on treatments intended to burnish his health and prolong his life; at one point, in the hope of reversing the aging process and in consultation with some 30 doctors, he received a series of plasma transfusions from young donors, including his teenage son. He stopped after not detecting any evidence that they were doing any good.

While income disparities in the United States have been unusually pronounced over recent decades, they’re nothing new. Nor is the awareness of Americans on the lower rungs of the economic ladder that the higher rungs can be fantastically cushy, posh perches.

But the present versions of cushiness and poshness are distinctive in number, variety and specificity: There’s no corner of American life that cannot be gilded, no minor inconvenience or major frustration at which heaps of money cannot be thrown, no service that cannot be tweaked or refined in myriad fashions to suit and flatter the privileged.

That’s fertile soil for envy, for resentment, for an ill will that helps explain the sharpness of our political divisions and the nastiness of our political discourse. That’s the problem with it. It leaves more and more people feeling cheated in more and more ways. It’s a kind of flaunting, even if it’s not intended that way. It can come across as a taunt.

And is there any bigger taunt than the idea that with the right array of expensive gadgets, with the right retinue of exclusive gurus and with time-consuming, cash-dependent procedures and routines, you can keep the Grim Reaper off your doorstep? Death is sometimes spoken of as the great equalizer, but if your personal trainer, your nutrition coach and your sleep coach have any say in the matter, it arrives with unequal haste.

For the Love of Sentences

Following the death this month of Alice Munro, a Nobel-recognized master of the short story, The Times resurfaced an appraisal of her work by Ben Dolnick that was published in January. It included this astute observation about the genre in which she glittered: “There’s something reassuring about novels — you know where you stand with them. Even if all you’ve read is ‘Moby-Dick,’ you can say with a straight face that you’ve read Melville, just as a visitor to Paris can say she’s been to France. Short story writers, though, don’t have capital cities. You can wander and wander through their collected works and still feel as if you’re missing the main attractions. You never know quite when you’ve earned a passport stamp.” (Thanks to Peter Bernstein of White Plains, N.Y., and Margaret Velarde of Denver, among others, for spotlighting Ben’s article.)

In a tribute to Munro on Literary Hub, Jonny Diamond observed : “She wrote for everyone who has let the sharp edge of regret dull into a daily ache, who has been surprised by love, by need, by the desire for more, who has hesitated and lost, who has kept going, kept wondering, kept feeling, so deeply and so quietly, through all the endless days that take us from one end of life to the other.” (Barb Tiddens, Metuchen, N.J.)

Sticking with books: Ron Charles in The Washington Post had a tiny quibble with the novel “All Fours,” by Miranda July, whose protagonist turns her temporary lodging into an arena of erotic self-discovery. “This motel oasis, designed for her comfort, feels to her like a revelation and a revolution,” he wrote. “But it’s essentially Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’ with K-Y Jelly. And that’s not the only thing slippery about it. Yes, ‘All Fours’ is much funnier and infinitely sexier than Woolf’s essay, but the novel’s financial naïveté feels almost willful. The narrator imagines that her newfound freedom is predicated on having more confidence and better orgasms, but it’s actually predicated on having better child care and health insurance.” (Melissa Guensler, Fredericksburg, Texas)

Also in The Post, Matt Bai sought to trace J.D. Vance’s boundless sycophancy, including his appearance last week at Donald Trump’s trial: “I can’t say from experience how you’re supposed to know when you’ve officially become part of an organized crime family, but if you feel it necessary for your professional advancement to show up at a courthouse and pay respect to a patriarch charged with fraudulent payments to a porn star, chances are you check all the boxes.” (Stacia Lewandowski, Santa Fe, N.M., and Daniel Heckman, Decatur, Ill., among others)

In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols marveled at all the suck-ups surrounding Trump: “This G.O.P. embrace of Trump’s nihilism is not some standard-issue, ‘my guy, right or wrong’ defense of the party leader. What Republicans are doing now is a deeper and more stomach-churning abandonment of dignity, a rejection of moral agency in the name of ambition.” (Danny Boyson, Collegeville, Pa.)

In USA Today, Rex Huppke examined the folly and failure of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s unsuccessful attempt to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson: “Like a dull-witted Icarus, she has now flown too close to the dumb.” (Carl Baker, Redlands, Calif.)

In The Times, Bret Stephens previewed the first planned presidential debate next month: “If President Biden gets through the debate without committing a gaffe, he’ll surpass expectations. If Donald Trump gets through it without committing a felony, he’ll surpass expectations.” (Stephen Buckley, Durham, N.C.)

In Film Comment, Jonathan Romney bemoaned what he deemed to be the indulgences and excesses of “Megalopolis,” the director Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited new movie: “It’s as if Ed Wood had risen from the grave to remake ‘The Fountainhead’ on an infinite budget.” (John Braunstein, Lancaster, Pa.)

And in The Dispatch, Christopher J. Scalia celebrated the 40th anniversary of the song “ Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now ” by the band The Smiths, who included the lead singer Morrissey and the guitarist Johnny Marr: “When Morrissey begins the second verse, Marr and producer John Porter add a track of delicate, arpeggiated chords, heavy on the reverb and delay, to deepen the texture. You’ve heard of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound? This is Johnny Marr’s Bead Curtain of Jangle.” (Peter Kiley, Washington, D.C.)

To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.

What I’m Reading, Doing and Watching

I’ve been having a good time listening to the audio version of the new novel “You Should Be So Lucky,” a gay romantic comedy of sorts by Cat Sebastian that Olivia Waite recently praised in The Times. It’s about a washed-up journalist who’s all studied aloofness and a messed-up baseball player who’s all raw need. (“Their romance is like watching a Labrador puppy fall in love with a pampered Persian cat, all eager impulse on one side and arch contrariness on the other,” Olivia deftly wrote.) The pleasures of “You Should Be So Lucky” put me somewhat in mind of Stephen McCauley’s fiction, with sprinklings of the sublimely witty trio of novels by Joe Keenan featuring the odd-couple gay friends Gilbert Selwyn and Philip Cavanaugh.

I just added a new event to my schedule of talks about my new book, “ The Age of Grievance ,” and I’m especially excited about it because it pairs me with my Times colleague and friend Bret Stephens. We’ll be together onstage at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan on Thursday, June 13; registration details are here .

I’m not loving the third season of the HBO series “Hacks” the way I did the first two, but I’ll stick with it and am glad for it because, well, Jean Smart. Her performance as the stand-up comic Deborah Vance is still superb, and the good will that “Hacks” has built up is reflected in fun recent guest appearances by Helen Hunt and Tony Goldwyn.

On a Personal Note

“She grew up in a loving home that promoted academic success and intellectual curiosity. He showed an early passion for storytelling and writing.”

Both of those sentences are about me. They appear sequentially like that. And, no, they’re not a commentary on gender fluidity, not a peek into some belief of mine from childhood or later on that I straddled two genders. They are a glimpse into what a mess — and curiosity — the “Biography of Frank Bruni,” an ostensible book that was briefly available for $12.99 on Amazon, is.

I say “ostensible” because it’s more of a pamphlet, all of 40 pages if you count the title page, the table of contents and the five “workbook questions” at the end. Many pages have fewer than 75 words. A typical chapter is four pages long and comprises the kind of basic résumé details that a chatbot could harvest in seconds.

I know this because, after happening upon the “Biography of Frank Bruni” last Thursday, I ordered it and it promptly arrived. But when I went looking for it on Amazon’s site a few days ago, it had disappeared — replaced by other ostensible biographies of me.

One was also titled “Biography of Frank Bruni” but, according to the product description, had a different length (57 pages). It also named a different author. Another, “Frank Bruni: The Biography,” was 30 pages long, with a cover photo of a man who was not me (there was a vague resemblance) and its own promotional copy, which began this way: “Once upon a time, in the crisp autumn of 1964, a young boy named Frank Anthony Bruni came into the world.” A third title, “Frank Bruni Biography: Navigating the World of Food, Politics, and Culture,” was 90 pages and came in multiple editions, including Kindle.

All four of the above titles cited a publication date of three to four weeks ago, which coincided with the release of “The Age of Grievance.” That’s no accident. Often these days, when an established author publishes a new book that may get some attention, there’s a sudden emergence of “spammy clone biographies,” as Will Oremus in The Washington Post called a rash of titles about the journalist Kara Swisher that popped up in February, about the same time that her memoir, “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,” did. (The Swisher boom — or boon? — was first reported by Emanuel Maiberg in the tech blog 404 Media.)

I guess that she and I should be flattered? I am, sort of. I never imagined I’d be the subject of any biography, so a pamphlet of pablum exceeds my dreams! But I’m also unsettled, and not by the realization that my life, or at least life story, doesn’t belong to me, but by the idea that we are masses of bytes at the mercy of bots. In this scenario, emblematic of our digital age, I’m neither “he” nor “she.” I’m really more “it.”

Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book "The Age of Grievance" and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter .   Instagram   Threads   @ FrankBruni • Facebook