Not necessarily a liar, but existing in a world (or with a mind) that's more complicated or multiple than a straightforward “account” can grasp. Her perception of it, however, is so skewed and fantastical that we can't even be certain if the eponymous character, her roommate and confidant, exists.ĬW: Perfect. JMD: Along similar lines, how about the narrator in Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina? It's not that she isn't articulate or doesn't understand her situation. But, following the death of her father, she’s forced to leave the family farm, and once we’ve seen her through the eyes of others we realize we’ve been misled-not intentionally, but because she’s internalized a life of captivity and abuse. Alice Soissons, of Gaetan Soucy's The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches, is very forthright in her presentation of herself. But there's a case for narrators who are unintentionally misleading or otherwise limited in their ability to tell their story. Beckett's major narrators strike me as quite reliable, since they're not even willing to pretend to be people. Deluding himself, I guess, in that he'd like to believe he's still got something to look forward to, but that's too universal an unreliability to count for much. JMD: But I don’t see Krapp as conspicuously dishonest. If unreliable narrators manipulate facts to suit their needs, Krapp-whose existence consists solely of listening to self-selected segments of autobiographical tapes and eating bananas-is the apotheosis of unreliability. Should Beckett be similarly nixed? I’d otherwise propose Krapp. We’ll qualify our assignment by rebranding it 'Best Unrecognized Unreliable Narrators.'Ĭolin Winnette: How unreliable is a narrator really if he or she is famous for being unreliable? Nabokov dined out on his unreliable narrators for, what, forty years? Who needs those recommendations? Davies: Let's set some ground rules: No Faulkner, no Joyce. Here, once and for all, they (maybe) settle the debate: Who’s the greatest unreliable narrator in literature? Davies each have a new novel featuring an unreliable narrator: Winnette's Coyote follows a possibly unhinged mother and Davies's Fancy is about a man looking for a catsitter.

Unreliable narrator examples