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[Re-release] Unreliable Narrators
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This is a repeat of an episode originally released on November 8, 2022.
Liar? Naïve? Or impaired? What if the narrator of the story isn’t telling the truth? In this week’s episode, Brook and Sarah discuss surprising twists and the cues that they’re coming.
Works mentioned or discussed
Gone Girl (2012) Gillian Flynn
The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961) Wayne C. Booth
The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016) Ruth Ware
The Silent Patient (2019) Alex Michaelides
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) Agatha Christie
The Guest List (2020) Lucy Foley
One by One (2020) Ruth Ware
Rebecca (1938) Daphne Du Maurier
Forrest Gump (1994)
The Office (US)
Fight Club (1999)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
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Transcript
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Transcript
Introduction and Season Break
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, it's Sarah. Brooke and I are taking a short break from recording new episodes to catch up on our reading lists and plan for the next season of Clued in Mystery. While we're off, we are re-releasing a few of our favorite episodes. We hope you enjoy. Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I'm Sarah.
00:00:28
Speaker
And I'm Brooke, and we both love mystery. Good morning, Brooke. Hi, Sarah. How are you doing? I'm good. Thank you. How are you? Great, great.
Unreliable Narrators Introduction
00:00:39
Speaker
So today we are going to be talking about unreliable narrators, which is something I'm really looking forward to discussing with you.
00:00:48
Speaker
I know it's been on our mind ever since we started the podcast, so this is going to be a fun conversation today. Absolutely. Before we begin, I'll just do a quick spoiler note. So in this episode, we are going to be speaking about big reveals and plot twists. And while we will try to avoid spoilers, we may be providing more details about the mysteries than we typically do.
00:01:11
Speaker
If you haven't read or watched the books and films listed in the show notes, you might want to do that first before you listen to the rest of the episode. So let's get started.
Understanding Unreliable Narrators
00:01:22
Speaker
When we say unreliable narrator, we are talking about the narration or the point of view of a story. An unreliable narrator is lying or withholding information from the reader or the viewer, which can lead to a surprising twist when the truth is revealed.
00:01:36
Speaker
Sometimes withholding information is intentional, like in Gone Girl, and until the big reveal there is no hint that the narrator has been untruthful and concealed their true motivation. Other times the narrator is impaired, for example by alcohol, which should be a clue to the reader that perhaps what the narrator is telling them may not be completely accurate. I personally get so wrapped up in the story that I usually miss that cue.
00:02:02
Speaker
The term unreliable narrator appeared for the first time in 1961 in The Rhetoric of Fiction by Wayne C. Booth. Since then, other literary scholars have identified characteristics of different types of unreliable narrators, creating lists of multiple categories. I'm not sure I would make quite so many distinctions, but I would break them down into three.
00:02:25
Speaker
So the first would be the naive narrator. This is typically someone who is young. Then we have the impaired narrator. And as I mentioned, this might be due to alcohol or to drugs. Finally, we have the intentionally unreliable or the lying narrator. In mystery, we see the impaired and the lying narrators most frequently.
00:02:42
Speaker
Think the woman in cabin 10, where we're not sure if she's reliable because she's been drinking or she's taking medication. An example of the lying narrator would be the silent patient.
00:02:57
Speaker
Agatha Christie is credited with the first use of unreliable narration in 1926 with the murder of Roger Ackroyd, when the narrator of that mystery is the murderer. For some context, this book was published shortly before her disappearance, which is why one of the theories about that time in her life was that it was a publicity stunt. In other words, that she was her own unreliable narrator.
Impact of Unreliable Narrators in Fiction
00:03:20
Speaker
In the book, Poirot puts the truth together through a series of clever clues, but most readers, including me, even though I knew what the reveal was when I read it, don't put it together. This caused a huge stir for readers, and the book continues to be listed amongst the greatest mystery novels of all time. Thanks, I'm sure, to the legacy of unreliable narrators that have followed.
00:03:41
Speaker
Which brings me to Gone Girl. Published in 2012, it has sold more than 20 million copies, and you could argue that it really led to a resurgence of novels featuring unreliable narration. So Brooke, let's start our conversation by talking about Gone Girl. I think about my reaction when I read the book, and I wonder if it was similar to the way that readers reacted to Roger Ackroyd. It was just such a surprise. What do you think?
00:04:06
Speaker
Oh, I love that comparison, Sarah. Here we are in 2022 and we have a lot of examples of unreliable narrators. I would say since the Gone Girl explosion, that's become a trend and a really useful narrative device that we see often.
00:04:28
Speaker
But it was kind of a shock to us because it hadn't been something that had been in in a lot of fiction So it was so shocking and I imagine that was the exact same when The murder of Roger Ackroyd came out. I mean clearly it hadn't been used in detective fiction at all she was sort of the first one to use that in the Golden Age and it had to have caused quite a stir I can understand the controversy and
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, and I just remember when Gone Girl came out, like there just was this so much buzz about it. And I have to say, you know, people were very, very good about keeping the big reveal to themselves, right? I think because it was such...
00:05:15
Speaker
I don't know if enjoyable, I guess enjoyable is the right word. Like it just was such an enjoyable experience to reach that part of the book and be like, oh my goodness. And you wanted other people to have that same experience. So certainly the people around me were very careful not to reveal what the big secret of the book was.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah, I'm actually proud of us as a society that that happened that way because I know like a copy of it was passed around at the office I was working at at the time. And I mean, I just think about the 15 to 20 people that were in that space and we were like, okay, it's your turn. And the rest of the people would stand, you know, by grinning, knowing what was going to, you know, be revealed.
00:06:10
Speaker
And yeah, you're right. I think that that's something we could be proud of at our ability to keep that secret and keep the joy for the next reader. Yeah, you talked about the kind of explosion since Gone Girl.
The Appeal of Plot Twists
00:06:23
Speaker
In preparing for our conversation today, I read an article that suggested that 680 novels have been published since 2012 with Girl in the title.
00:06:36
Speaker
And you know that almost either girl or woman in the title is almost the signal that this book is going to have a wild unexpected twist in it.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yes, and interestingly enough, even though we know that when we pick up that title, it's the signal. There's going to be an unreliable narrator in this, but I fall for it every time. It doesn't lose its power. Like you said, I was really, really happy to hear you
00:07:10
Speaker
to admit that let's say the impaired narrator who's drinking a lot or perhaps she's had a head injury. Sometimes it's an injury that has caused her impairment. That should be our big clue, but that you admitted that you usually still don't
00:07:27
Speaker
don't get the clue and i'm in the same boat and i it's just such a credit to those authors to be able to make that work but i also think it's a a credit to us as readers that we we really want that ride so we're willing to suspend that disbelief a little bit and and go go on the journey.
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's exactly it, Brooke. I think generally audiences are trusting, right? Like we want to believe that what we're reading is the truth. And we enter into a contract, I think, with the author to suspend our disbelief, right? Rather than to be searching for those hints that things might not all be
00:08:13
Speaker
might not be as they're being portrayed. And I can think of one book that I've read where it was very clear from the beginning that the narrator was unreliable. And I thought, this doesn't work because I know that this is what's going to happen.
00:08:39
Speaker
But the author turned it around and there was even more unreliability that I wasn't expecting. It actually worked out really, really well and I was pleased that I read the whole book. But I can't think if there's any other examples that I've read where it's been
00:09:01
Speaker
obvious to me that this person isn't, you know, what they're sharing is not what's actually what's going on.
00:09:10
Speaker
these stories are a reason, maybe a good reminder to finish that book, because sometimes it's the big twist at the end that is the payoff. And so your comment was really good because you thought you knew where that book was going and maybe that it was kind of a tired plot and then
00:09:35
Speaker
you were happily surprised and I think that's something that an unreliable narrator story does is that for a long time sometimes you're just thinking you're watching this person's day-to-day life and it's can get rather dull like okay here she is she's getting drunk again and going to work and
00:09:55
Speaker
poorly managing her life, but you have to wait until that point where all the other pieces fall into place and the story pays off.
Gender and Perception in Unreliable Narration
00:10:05
Speaker
So I just want to pick up on something that you just mentioned about that the narrator is female because a lot of the examples that I can think of of unreliable narrators are female narrators.
00:10:21
Speaker
And, you know, again, going back to the number of books with women or girl, you know, that that's a signal that the narrator is going to be female. So I've read a couple of books where the narrator, the unreliable narrator has been male, and it almost comes as more of a surprise.
00:10:40
Speaker
But when I put on my feminist hat for a moment, I wonder if audiences, because of the association with feminine or female unreliable narrators, I wonder if audiences haven't been primed to question the female point of view.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, I have thought of this as well. And it reminds me of maybe in the Victorian era, where she's got the vapors. She's hysterical. And I think that there is a common recurring trend to kind of paint women in that light.
00:11:25
Speaker
I also believe that it plays on the fact that the market for these books are women. And so it's easy for us to put ourselves in that person's shoes, perhaps easier because I don't feel like this is a genre that's really focused on being marketed towards men.
00:11:46
Speaker
So I think we've got a little bit of both. We could look at it from two different ways. But I will agree that because I recently read a book where the narrator was male and everything got tipped on its head at the end. And I'm not even going to say the title because it would be a spoiler in and of itself. But I agree. I almost felt more shocked because it was a guy. And then I had to really question myself.
00:12:15
Speaker
Well, what makes a man more trustworthy as a narrator? So, you know, some deep thoughts after reading. And just, you know, to your comment about that the audience is typically female.
00:12:30
Speaker
I think most of the books that I can think of that have unreliable narrators fall into that domestic thriller category that we talked about in our domestic thriller episode. It's a story that you can very easily imagine you or someone you know
00:12:53
Speaker
leading a similar life to what is being portrayed in the, um, in this book. Um, and maybe that's part of the appeal as well, right? Like, um, and it maybe kind of goes back to our, like, what would you do question that we've asked in the past.
Multiple Narrators and Storytelling
00:13:11
Speaker
One, we do see male, unreliable narrators in sort of the larger cast books where I'm thinking of maybe Lucy Foley's The Guest List or One by One by Ruth Ware. You've got a group of people, so you've got multiple point of view and you don't know who to trust. It's very likely that more than one of them that's telling this story is unreliable in some way.
00:13:40
Speaker
So you do see kind of all genders being represented there. But that's a different kind of story and a different kind of experience because you're not just living out that one narrator's telling of the story. Yeah, that's a great point because
00:13:58
Speaker
When you're reading the guest list, you know that someone in this cast of characters, at least one of them, is up to no good, right? Part of the enjoyment of reading that is trying to figure out, okay, whose side of the story can I trust? And maybe you can't trust any of them, right? Usually they've all got
00:14:25
Speaker
a secret that they're trying to keep. But do you find the shock or the surprise when you're in that one character's head, if it's a single narrator for the book, do you find that that shock or the surprise with the big reveal, do you find that satisfying?
00:14:51
Speaker
I don't know if I would use the word satisfying as much as a little bit of a thrill. When I think about that book that Shall Remain Unnamed, I literally stood in my kitchen with my mouth gaping open and I just had to stand there. I was that in shock.
00:15:12
Speaker
That author got me that good, but it was so much fun. It was an audiobook I was listening to and I instantly wanted to start over again and see all the pieces and points that I had missed along the way.
00:15:29
Speaker
Yeah, I have to say I really admire when an author invokes that, as you say, that thrill that comes with that big reveal, right? There's something about reading a book where it's got girl or woman in the title and you know that, okay, this is going to be
00:15:46
Speaker
an unreliable narrator. But it's almost better when it's that you have no idea that that's coming. Yes. Right. Because I imagine that the title of that book, you said it was a male narrator, right? So there wouldn't have been woman or girl, I'm thinking, in the title. So you wouldn't have even had that clue that you were in for such a treat.
00:16:11
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. And that's a really good point. And back to our, um, back to our comment about the, the sort of the feminist perspective on this, like, wouldn't it be funny if we had the guy on the train? I mean, it just doesn't even work.
00:16:27
Speaker
The Man in the Window. Either of those titles I think would evoke more of like a romance, I would think, right? Oh my goodness, yes. Right? I don't know, maybe it's just me, but that's what I would expect from that title.
00:16:47
Speaker
We've both talked about how we tend to miss those cues that this book is going to have a big reveal, have an unreliable narrator. What do you think makes those stories work? I don't think there's a bigger signal to a reader that, hey, there's going to be something that you're not expecting in this book than having girl or woman in the title.
00:17:14
Speaker
People are like, wow, that twist was such a shocker. I loved that you said that we make a contract and I think that's completely true. When you begin a book, as a reader, you buy in. You're like, okay, I'm going to go along with this and go along on
Real-Life Parallels with Unreliable Narration
00:17:34
Speaker
the ride.
00:17:34
Speaker
But I wonder if there's also some deeper things that we really enjoy about this because Ruth Ware writes a lot of her books have some level of unreliable narrator in there. I read an article and a quote by her is, we are all unreliable narrators. I wonder if there's some human nature in there because we all have our own filter.
00:18:03
Speaker
If you and I sat through the same event and then we retold it to our friends, we would have two different stories. I feel like the narrative device is very real life. We're all going to tell the story with our own perceptions and our own life experiences. Maybe that's part of what makes it so satisfying in the end. I don't know.
00:18:29
Speaker
No, I think that's it, Brooke. I think you're right that as you say, we all interpret things, we all have our own interpretation of events. And so when we're reading something, whether it's a multiple point of view with multiple narrators, it becomes very clear there that there's different perceptions of what's going on.
00:18:53
Speaker
But even with a single narrator, yeah, you get that. I think that's a really good point.
00:19:01
Speaker
I was thinking about the way our memories fade and they get kind of jumbled up and our memories contort to the way we wanted it to be or, um, or sometimes opposite. Sometimes they contort to, you know, the worst case scenario of that, of that event. And so, um, that, that plays a part the way our memories work in, um, in these types of stories too. Yeah. I mean, I don't trust my memory.
00:19:31
Speaker
The more years that pass, the less I trust my memories. So I looked up some articles to see lists of books with unreliable narrators. And it's a bit of a funny thing to list, because if you know that the narrator is unreliable, does that take away some of the enjoyment of the book? But Rebecca was on a couple of those lists.
00:20:00
Speaker
And I don't know. I guess, Rebecca, you could consider that narrator to be naive. I don't know if I would. Like, would you would you put Rebecca on that on the list of unreliable narrators? Yeah, that one surprised me, too. I think you're right. It must fall into that naive, naive character. And, you know, I did some of the same looking around and
00:20:27
Speaker
They were, you know, also referencing Forrest Gump, which would have been a naive narrator. And then Michael Scott from The Office. Again, it was a surprising example, but I get it because his perspective is not
00:20:45
Speaker
Accurate and as the audience we know that like right off the bat right that okay this guy is not going to be telling things the way that they truly are but I had never considered an unreliable narrator in a comedy situation so that was kind of a fun thing to think about.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yeah. And that, and that's a good
Unreliable Narration Beyond Mysteries
00:21:03
Speaker
point. Like unreliable narration is not limited to mystery. I mean, we've been talking about mysteries, but fight club is not a mystery, but certainly there's unreliable narrator. Um, and then the film, the sixth sense as well. Right? Like, I think you could say that was an unreliable narrator and, but it wasn't, I guess it was naive, right? Cause he didn't accept or he didn't realize what was going on.
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah, there was not a deliberate or intentional trick to the reader, but you know, those are both two of my favorite movies, Fight Club, Six Cents. The Others is also the same. It's an unreliable narration. Excellent.
Conclusion and Future Discussions
00:21:51
Speaker
Well, thanks Brooke. I think this has been a really great conversation talking about unreliable narrators and some of my favorite book experiences that I've had recently.
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah, this has been great, Sarah. And like so many of our topics, I assume that we will probably return to it at some point. But for today, everyone, thank you for joining us on Clued in Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah. And we both love mystery.
00:22:16
Speaker
Clued In Mystery is produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers at Silvermansound.com. Visit us online at CluedInMystery.com or social media at CluedInMystery. If you liked what you heard, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or telling your friends.