The Low-down on Unreliable Narrators

If you’ve been working your way through this year's winter reading challenge, Turn up the Heat, chances are you’ve already completed a bunch of tasks. Many of them are self-explanatory. The book with orange on its cover – easy; the book that’s older than you – no problem. But what about the book with an unreliable narrator? What’s that when it’s at home?

If this is one of those challenges you’ve still to tick off, here’s the low-down on unreliable narrating. And a little about how this genre, if you can call it a genre, evolved.

One of the classic examples of the unreliable narrator is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, first published in 1926. Possibly this is the first example of its kind, because it blew the mystery reading public away with it twisty, surprise ending. Since then, unreliable narrators frequently pop up in crime fiction as it can be a clever way to hide facts from the reader.

Unreliable narrators may be unreliable for a number of reasons. The first is because they are the killer and they are flat out lying. Possibly someone’s going to reveal their secrets and unmask them as the killer by the end of the book, and that’s going to be the twist in the story. Only, of course, the reader doesn’t suspect a thing. (I can think of quite a few of these I’ve enjoyed, but if I tell you what they are, it will spoil the surprise!)

Narrators can also be unreliable because they can’t remember events in their past. Perhaps they have experienced trauma – like Cadence in We Were Liars by E Lockhart, or maybe they are a little too fond of the bottle, like Rachel in The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Maybe they are mentally ill or suffering from PTSD and have a tenuous grasp on reality. Check out Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island.

Dementia in an elderly character trying to remember the past pops up in Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey and Three Things about Elsie by Joanna Cannon. Perhaps Joanna Cannon is quite the queen of the unreliable narrator as she has a socially awkward narrator in A Tidy Ending, and a child narrator in The Trouble with Goats and Sheep. You can add both novels to your list of unreliable narrators and they’re brilliant reads.

Janice Hallett has created a twisty plot in The Twyford Code, where the narrator, Steven Smith, recently released from prison, and struggling to remember an event in his youth, records his story on a phone. His narration is unreliable in a way that will definitely keep you on your toes. 

We’ve come up with a handy little list of unreliable narrators, but any internet search will help you find more. And whether or not you are working your way through the challenges in Turn Up the Heat, a story with an unreliable narrator can be a surprising, suspenseful and satisfying read.

Posted by JAM

11 July 2023

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