Don’t believe everything you read.
Coined by Zayn C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction in 1961, the unreliable narrator refers to a narrator who cannot be fully trusted in recounting the plot unfolding around them. Either intentionally or unintentionally, the narrator essentially misleads the reader into a false sense of truth. This is an interesting plot device in literature as it complicates the plot and forces the reader to take an active role in understanding the nature of reality in the text. But readers don’t need the narrator to be truthful to enjoy literature; in fact we don’t even have to like the narrator to enjoy literature.
Some are malicious and ill-meaning against the reader, found in thriller novels such as Gone Girl by Gillian Murphy, and disturbing texts like Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Many other unreliable narrators are merely flawed individuals consumed by issues such as miscommunication, or naivety, such as Frances from Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends. In Rooney’s Literary Fiction genre, her novels often focus on a main character who is flawed and questionable at times. Frances lies to herself and the reader, causing her conception of reality to become askew. The main character’s unreliability stems not from a place of creating mystery or suspense but instead to demonstrate her insecurities and how they bleed into action and thought. This kind of unreliable narrator is one that reflects many of the reader’s own flaws such as delusion and self-doubt, offering a unique perspective where we are entangled in the conflict the narrator has with themselves.
Alternatively, other styles of these narrators are more intentionally deceiving with their unreliability, becoming a vehicle for exploration of traits such as narcissism and manipulation. An example of this would be Briony Tallis’ carefully constructed role as an author, and narrator, in Ian McEwan’s Atonement. She intentionally deceives those around her and eventually also reveals her overarching authorial lie to the reader. The postmodern novel is an intriguing deep dive into how a narrator has power over the experience of the reader and their understanding of the plot. Both these unreliable narrators become quite uncomfortable to read, and we can often find ourselves hating the character. But why do we find characters we don’t like entertaining? Why do we enjoy being lied to and misled?
An unreliable narrator is an intriguing character study of what it means to be human, how we lie, and are corrupted by our own arrogances and prejudices. Unreliable narrators confront what we don’t like about ourselves. We don’t like the narrators because they are much too similar to us. It is through this that authors love to remind us of one key fact: We are all unreliable narrators in one way or another.
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