I’ve always loved unreliable narrators and how they place us as readers into the role of detectives, piecing the "truth" of a story together. The narrators I’ve picked below vary in their intent: some deliberately deceive, and others do so unconsciously or through omission. In several, the twist hinges on the use of an unreliable narrator, while in others, narrative unreliability poses a moral dilemma for the reader. In a few, an added layer of unreliability emerges: the narrator’s perception is distorted by technology. In an age of AI, simulations, and deep fakes, the unreliable narrator is arguably more needed than ever, holding a mirror up to the unreliability of our own world.
Scientist Iris awakes in a hospital bed with no memories. She is told that she is the first test subject for an experimental therapy, placing a piece of AI technology into her brain. She is also told that she volunteered for it. But without her memories, Iris doesn’t know who or what to trust.
The reader goes on a journey with Iris as she discovers the truth whilst battling a pioneering AI chip implanted into her brain. As memories are fed back to her, she struggles to work out what to believe and who to trust of those her memories tell her she loves. The novel is speculative fiction and a cautionary tale exploring the impact of unchecked technology.
Shirley Jackson is perhaps best known for The Haunting of Hill House, but her final work, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, is masterful. The novel is narrated from the knowing perspective of eighteen-year-old Merricat Blackwood.
In the wake of the murder of their family, Merricat lives with her preternaturally serene sister Constance and their Uncle Julian. Six years earlier, the rest of their family died from arsenic poisoning at dinner, Julian being the sole survivor – Merricat had been sent to her room without supper, and Constance, who avoided consuming the poisoned sugar, was tried for murder and ultimately acquitted.
It is questionable as to how far Merricat is an unreliable narrator. In the first paragraph of the novel, Merricat states matter-of-factly, "Everyone else in my family is dead." However, Merricat’s unique perspective enables Jackson to hide certain truths of the story in plain sight, namely, to what extent each of Merricat and Constance are, or are not, the Blackwoods’ murderers.
The novel is an inversion of the haunted house trope, as the Blackwood sisters barricade themselves in their house, fearing their neighbours. Part macabre fairy-tale and, in part, a love story between two sisters, it is Merricat’s voice which makes the novel so memorable.
Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister, Constance, and her Uncle Julian for company, Merricat just wants to preserve their delicate way of life. But ever since Constance was acquitted of murdering the rest of the family, the world isn't leaving the Blackwoods alone. And when Cousin Charles arrives, armed with overtures of friendship and a desperate need to get into the safe, Merricat must do everything in her power to protect the remaining family.
This book features a brilliant narrative voice. The title paraphrases William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell. Protagonist Janina’s neighbour, nicknamed Big Foot, is found dead in the first of a number of local murders as hunters become the hunted. 65-year-old Janina has a greater affinity with the local deer than the victims and their love of hunting.
It is Janina’s perspective that makes the narrative so gripping. Set in a remote Polish village, it has the pace of a thriller, and her voice combines humour with deeply troubled questions about humanity’s place in the world. On watching a pregnant woman reading a newspaper, she wonders: "How could one possibly know all this and not miscarry?" Janina’s first-person narration enables us to see how far she is misjudged and overlooked by her community.
With DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD, Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk returns with a subversive, entertaining noir novel. In a remote Polish village, Janina Duszejko, an eccentric woman in her sixties, recounts the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. She is reclusive, preferring the company of animals to people; she's unconventional, believing in the stars; and she is fond of the poetry of William Blake, from whose work the title of the book is taken. When members of a local hunting club are found murdered, Duszejko becomes involved in the investigation. By…
I recently discovered Reid’s writing and I love the slow literary suspense of Foe, his twist relying upon an unreliable first-person narrator.
Farmer Junior is selected by lottery as a possible candidate for an off-world workforce colonising space. The narrative takes place on earth, however, and it is a domestic portrait of a marriage as much as it is science fiction. Junior is a transparent and sincere narrator. His unreliability comes from what he himself does not know and his hazy memory of his own past. ("Everything blends into a nebulous fog.")
His narrative reveals more than he realises, including through his treatment of a horned beetle in their closet. As with the best fiction, it holds a mirror up to our own humanity.
“Foe is a tale of implacably mounting peril that feels all the more terrifying for being told in such a quiet, elegantly stripped-down voice. Iain Reid knows how to do ‘ominous’ as well as anyone I’ve ever read.” —Scott Smith, author of The Ruins and A Simple Plan
A taut, psychological mind-bender from the bestselling author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things.
We don’t get visitors. Not out here. We never have.
In Iain Reid’s second haunting, philosophical puzzle of a novel, set in the near-future, Junior and Henrietta live a comfortable, solitary life on their farm, far from the…
I find it interesting when first-person unreliable narrators pose a moral dilemma for the reader: how far we sympathise with a character who may or may not be culpable of a crime.
From the very opening of the novel, we are told, "Tonight will be my first night under house arrest." Ruth Ardingly has just been released from prison to serve out a sentence of house arrest for arson and suspected murder (after the death of her seven-year-old grandson) at her farm, The Well. Returning to The Well, Ruth must piece together the tragedy that shattered her marriage and tore her family apart, amid the backdrop of a drought-ridden country, where, miraculously, The Well has water.
The novel is told retrospectively by Grandmother Ruth, whose narrative reliability is impacted by both memory and grief.
AN OBSERVER NEW FACE OF FICTION 2015 A HUFFINGTON POST 'ONE TO WATCH IN 2015'
LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD) DAGGER 2015
'I was gripped by Catherine Chanter's The Well immediately. The beauty of her prose is riveting, the imagery so assured. This is an astonishing debut' Sarah Winman, author of When God was a Rabbit
'I loved this book!' JESSIE BURTON, author of The Miniaturist
When Ruth Ardingly and her family first drive up from London in their grime-encrusted car and view The Well, they are enchanted by a…
Many contemporary thrillers’ ultimate twist hinges on the use of an unreliable narrator. One of the best is Alex Michaelides’ internationally bestselling debut, The Silent Patient. It follows a psychotherapist trying to help his patient, Alicia, recover after she refuses to speak following the murder of her husband.
The novel is a perfect balancing act of suspecting Alicia yet finding her sympathetic in equal measure. I did not, for one moment, anticipate the ending and first-person unreliable narration is key to Michaelides’ masterful twist.
"An unforgettable―and Hollywood-bound―new thriller... A mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy." ―Entertainment Weekly
The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband―and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.
Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five…
It began with a dying husband, and it ended in a dynasty.
It took away her husband’s pain on his deathbed, kept her from losing the family farm, gave her the power to build a thriving business, but it’s illegal to grow in every state in the country in 1978.
It even brings her first love from high school back; the only problem is that he works for the FBI. Will their occupations implode their romance, or will the opposite happen?
A second chance at love, opposites attract, rags to riches heroine trope story.
It began with a dying husband and it ended in a dynasty.
It took away her husband’s pain on his deathbed, kept her from losing the family farm, gave her the power to build a thriving business, but it’s illegal to grow in every state in the country in 1978. It even brings her first love from high school back; the only problem he works for the FBI. Will their occupations implode their romance or will the opposite happen? A second chance at love, opposites attract , rags to riches heroine trope story.
