The Return of the Unreliable Narrator: Why storyellers who lie are back in vogue

I recently finished a popular thriller novel at the recommendation of a friend. “It starts slow,” he cautioned. “But the ending—text me when you get to the ending. I want to know what you think.”

I had a pretty good idea of what direction the story would take at that statement alone. I read approximately 150 books a year. Before I had children, the number was closer to 200. Books rarely surprise me.

When they do, it’s usually because the author chose an absurd ending, or because I got so lost in the story that I missed vital clues.

Obviously, I’m delighted by the former circumstance while the latter seems to be the more common occurrence.

This particular novel—and no, I won’t identify it. Declaring that a book has an unreliable narrator is a major spoiler in its own right—did not fall into either category.

The conclusion felt inevitable from the earliest chapters, both because the writer made only the feeblest effort to establish red herrings, and because—well. We’ve been down this road before, haven’t we?

Unreliable narrators are having a moment. It’s a trick that can work really well. Often, however, it’s a trick that sacrifices form in the interest of delivering a major twist ending.

Are unreliable narrators a passing fad? A cheap gimmick? Or is there perhaps a little more to it than that?

In this article, we take a look at the literary convention of the unreliable narrator. Where it comes from, when it’s been used effectively, and why it’s in vogue right now.

Unreliable Narrator Definition

While many of the most popular “unreliable narrator,” stories of the modern era involve a third-act twist in which it is revealed that the person telling the story is actually the villain, it doesn’t have to be that way.

An unreliable narrator is simply unreliable.

Girl on the Train or The Woman in the Window, are good examples of this. Both stories are told by characters whose perceptions can’t be fully trusted thanks to their alcohol abuse.

The unreliable narrator trope needn’t only be employed as a way of ending a thriller with a memorable twist. It’s used just as frequently in literary fiction.

Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye is an unreliable narrator. He lies as a matter of habit. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are unreliable narrators in their respective stories for the same reason.

Some unreliable narrators are simply naïve. Molly in the Maid series frequently provides the reader with information she has very conspicuously misinterpreted herself.

There’s also the outsider convention, in which a story is narrated by a character who isn’t necessarily driving the plot forward with their own actions.

This is a particularly common convention in old detective stories. Holmes, Poirot, and others of their ilk never “pick up the pen,” to tell their own story. The murders they solve are usually described on the page from the perspective of an assistant or some other observer.

Consequently, many of the observations they make throughout the book are incomplete or bizarre until everything gets tied together at the end.

Anthony Horowitz casts himself as this very specific type of unreliable narrator in his Hawthorne novels.

In these books a fictional Horrowitz adventures around London with an equally fictional detective named Daniel Hawthorn.

Hawthorn is an exceptionally effective though cold and problematic detective. Horrowitz trips through the storyline jeopardizing investigations and making observations that Hawthorn subsequently rips to shreds through simple logic.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Spoilers to follow. If you haven’t read Agatha Christie’s Roger Ackroyd, maybe think about skipping this section.

Ok. You’ve been warned. You are now entering spoiler territory.

Agatha Christie was relatively new when she wrote Roger Ackroyd. Her first Poirot novel, Mysterious Affair at Styles, had only been published a few years earlier. The book had made her famous but she was far from being the undisputed Queen of Crime that she is today.

Ackroyd helped change that by being simultaneously fresh, and familiar. There is an old joke about Christie novels. If you want to guess the killer, you need only to hang your suspicions on the least likely character.

It’s a rather uncharitable and reductive description of her work and yet it fits the bill perfectly for Ackroyd. We come to learn at the end of the book that the killer is our very own narrator—Dr. James Sheppard.

One of my favorite things about the story is that Sheppard should be an obvious suspect. We get his motive within the first twenty pages. He’s been hard-up for cash. What’s more, he has reason to believe that Ackroyd’s fiancé killed her previous husband by way of poison.

The murderess ends her life at the beginning of the novel. The story picks up that very day with Ackroyd inviting Sheppard to his home for dinner to discuss the matter.

Ackroyd confides in Sheppard that his fiancé has been the victim of blackmail and that he now has a letter identifying who that blackmailer is.

See where this is going?
Ackroyd is dead within the hour. Not only is Shepperd the last person to see him alive but he also discovers his body in a most unusual fashion. Shortly after he returns home he “receives a call,” from Ackroyd’s butler, who claims to have discovered the late man’s body.

Shepperd rushes back to Ackroyd’s house only to be received by a butler who has no clue what he is talking about.

By the end of the book, we know there never was a phone call. Shepperd simply wanted to control the circumstances within which the body was discovered.

He’s such a clear suspect that the story only works with him as the narrator. Otherwise, he would be too obvious to cast as the villain.

But by making Shepperd our entry point into the story we not only trust but also sympathize with him. Christie uses her unreliable narrator as a unique narrative trick, not only making her story unforgettable but also challenging our assumptions as readers.

What makes a villain? Is it what they do, or how we perceive their actions as an audience that matters the most?

Why Unreliable Narrators Are Having Their Moment

Unfortunately, not everyone who tries the unreliable narrator trick does so with Christie’s skill. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that none do.

There are many iterations of unreliable narration and some work better than others. I personally can tolerate a character who is unreliable on accident. I love Molly the Maid because the qualities that make her unreliable also make her incredibly endearing.

That’s not always the case. Alex Michaelides implements the unreliable narrator trick in almost all of his books. While I understand—to an extent—why he is so incredibly popular, I’m less warm to his characters because they tend to read like the maniacs they ultimately turn out to be.

Why are unreliable narrators having their moment?

I think the answer is simple enough to understand. A killer twist ending is the most dependable way for a genre-fiction book to go “viral.” Think about all of the smash crime or suspense hits of the last ten years.

Almost all of them have big twists. There is something about a twist ending that radically improves a book’s reccomendability. As readers, we all want to be surprised. Finding out that we’ve been led astray by the very person feeding us our story is a great way to achieve that surprise.

Except….

Except that the unreliable narrator is getting a little tired. He’s been busy over the last few years and maybe could use some rest.

I guess the good news is that he’s bound to get it soon enough. Just